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

by Scott Beith

  “Behind you!” Midas shouted, followed by a flaming arrow sent through the air just as we turned to look. Zephyr and a small battalion had crept stealthily upon us from the rear. His arrow right by my face, as one fast hand grip had stopped it from hitting me mid-flight. My face turning to find that recently convicted felon and former Sand King Lord Ariss had bent his hand through the bars and allowed the arrow to plunge through his palm, taking the hit for me. His face red with pain as he looked to me before watching his skin shed and spray out buckets of dusty sand like a storm.

  The prisoners were all shaking their cages in riot and revolt as they tried to create enough disturbance to help warrant our escape. “Just run!” said the sand king from within the blurry mist, helping cloud our path as we slipped through the corridors and deeper into the infirmary. “Find the truth!” he yelled, only to be caught and side kicked viciously by Zephyr as he relentlessly pursued us right down that corridor.

  We pulled left and right turns immediately and without inspection, we found the thick pale white tiles of the surgical rooms and locked ourselves into the safety of Maxwell’s front treatment lab, sealing the door via its thick metal door.

  I was ecstatic to discover Camilla sitting there on a bed, a white curtain half closed around her. She was listening to Ode and gazed towards Arlo and me with horror in her eyes. Her peaceful smiling stone gnome reporting his version of events with pride, completely oblivious to the grave nature of the queen’s orders.

  “What have you two done?” she stated in a cold shivering cower.

  “My sister has been taken,” Arlo said as we glanced around in a very quick inspection for others in the room.

  “Is it true what Ode has told me, that I have orders to seize you two on sight?” she asked, limping toward us.

  “Yes,” Arlo responded honestly as the door began to bang and shake. At least a dozen authentic infantry soldiers were trying to break through it with sheer determination and might. “Please, Camilla, you have to listen and trust me on this,” I began to plead, aware we had little time to convince her of helping us.

  “No. No. No. You both have to stop this right now,” she begged. “You have no idea about the ramifications of your actions and how they might affect others,” she added, her eyes glancing to me in concern. “You both need to turn yourself in, please… before this pursuit gets someone killed.”

  “Kya will die if we stop,” Arlo argued.

  “Anara too” I added.

  “Those men have been ordered to kill me,” I informed her, speaking over the banging coming from the door, “and your son has been convicted of treason.”

  “No, that’s impossible!” she stammered, putting a hand to her mouth, only to gradually accept it to be so. “How did this happen?” she demanded with tears brimming in her eyes.

  “We don’t have time to explain. We need to get her out of here,” the prince said, noticing that the door bolts were all becoming icy cold as snowflakes began drifting into the room. “We really need your help,” he said

  “Camilla, you’ve been lied to for a long time I believe,” I said quickly, taking a moment to stop myself as I dared to consider what I was about to say out loud – an accusation I was relatively sure about but had no direct evidence to back up. “I don’t think your husband was crazy… The ghosts are real, and I think Milena knew it all along.” I stipulated, catching even Arlo by surprise as I said it.

  Camilla looked to me, more scared by my statement than she seemed shocked or surprised by it, confusing me with how little I thought I had turned her world upside down. Perhaps in denial or just deep down being that it was something she’d always considered and semi-believed, despite the rest of the known world telling her her husband was insane.

  “Are you going help us?” Arlo asked, “We need to know now,” he stated, waving his hands past his head, distracted by a few tiny flea parasites buzzing around us. At first we thought nothing of it, but before we got the chance to consider why such vermin were in this clean clinical room, they had already begun changing colour, burning with a bright thermo-chemical red hot glow as they started biting at him.

  “Arlo?” I said to him, scared, only to have a swarm of them come out from the counter buzzing around me as well. I covered my ears with my hands and my eyes with my arms, feeling them burn and singe my skin as they began circling around, biting me. They left Camilla and Ode completely unharmed, only attacking Arlo and me. There micro-sized assault sending us both kneeling before the floor as we tried to tuck ourselves in tightly in a terrified instinctual defence.

  “What are you doing to them?” I heard Camilla yell to the doctor, his response was muffled by the sound of iridescent fire-flying gnats that buzzed and scorched us in a tiny yet tremendous level of torment. The sound of them buzzing was more scary and demoralising than the actual pain and sting of their tiny insatiable bites.

  “You heard what they said,” I heard the doctor announce between waving hand swipes as I attempted to swat away the largest cluster of them. His appearance suddenly profound – the curtain and cupboard door were both open, and I realised he must have been hiding there.

  “Maxwell, that’s enough,” Camilla demanded.

  Fed up and having had enough, I swallowed both Arlo and me inside a bubble extracted from each shady corner of the laboratory, synthesizing a sea-shell that’s mouth shut upwards around us protectively like an oyster protecting its pearl. It was a temporary and futile defence, as Arlo and I were left squished together, merely awaiting for each layer I channelled to be slowly zapped and burned away as the thick steel doors that held back our aggressors came down with an earth-rumbling thud.

  We started rocking side to side as soldiers began to break through the thinning layers of the clamshell, the black solid thickness cracking and sizzling like fog as it disintegrated, struggling to resist each of the angry fiery bugs.

  “Stop this now!” Camilla’s muffled voice insisted. “I said leave them be!” she ordered.

  “None of us want to do this, Camilla, but we have no choice,” the doctor snapped.

  No more words were said after that, all we heard was rustling. Suddenly, I felt us being weightless and lifted up into the air, much like someone strong was holding us, like we were under the wings of the angels as they flew us from harm.

  I expected to be greeted by soldiers charging towards us as the last layer was peeled off, but instead of a room with an angry army, I saw our woozy and wounded Legioness wobbling to stand upright as she moved between muddy grass puddles in the training courtyard that overlooked the great ocean lookout point. Her giant marble gateway stone sitting alongside the scenic bluey purple nightfall that had already set in upon the world.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” Camilla vowed resiliently, despite the strong stifling pain of a gimp leg and arm, those gilding restraints Midas put on her were burning into her as bright as day upon the a forced friction of teleporting matter external to herself.

  “Are you going to be able to use the stone?” the prince asked, concerned. Afraid for her welfare as he looked at the bright smouldering gold restraints while she did her best to limp on and ignore them.

  “ENOUGH OF THIS!” my queen roared, jumping upon us out of nowhere, followed closely by more of the most faithful knighted soldiers. Their knives, daggers and swords pressed to Arlo’s and my neck as we were instantly surrounded. “Son, it’s over.”

  “Is it true?” Camilla shouted to her queen. “Did you charge my son with treason? Were Midas’s demons real all along?” she added, unwilling to kneel despite a large number of more lengthy pikes and spears aimed at the tips of her arms, neck and chest.

  “If your son does what I ask he can still be redeemed,” Milena replied, ignoring any further questions about Midas.

  “You can’t hurt him, Milena. He’s the only hope you have of keeping that Sunspire running,” Camilla claimed, trying to reason with her tyrannous-appearing queen.

  “Yes,
you’re quite right,” she said with a certain sadistic grin towards her old friend. “But I can hurt you,” she declared, seeing her hot golden bracers for the great source of vulnerability and weakness that they brought her. “Bring her husband here too,” she commanded. “We will string them up right here together,” she ordered.

  In an instant, Camilla vanished again, her ghostly trail easy to follow as a hot red tinge of friction and drag followed the bracers she wore, the distance she made being both miniscule and dramatic.

  “Don’t try it,” Milena bitterly preached, all of us looking up by the stone she had reappeared before, her hand pressed against it, despite the cuffs burning bright red on her wrist and leg, looking near combustible as she attempted to activate the stone. The solid marble beginning to look as permeable as water as the incantations flared bright blue as she unlocked the magic of the gateway stones transport portal.

  The sky above it sucked in air like a hurricane, while the red hot wrist and ankle restraints began to turn to blue in conjunction with the colour of writing that was inscribed on the dissolving gateway stone. The doorway coming through like a wormhole that led into space, as this time nothing but blackness could be seen through the other end of whatever destination she had chosen.

  Like stars aligning in the sky, we all suddenly knew exactly what it was. It was the nightmare Midas used to speak of. A world in the shadows, those incantations flaring with the handprint bracers he’d put on his queen as they began to unlock and drop from her skin, after communicating with the stone like a crystal, opening up the gateway to the obvious destination he wanted us to explore.

  Blades flew towards the stone as they were sucked out of soldiers’ hands, the vacuum effect of this destination much more biased and forceful than the typical wormholes Camilla wilfully conducted, as everyone pulled backwards, trying to stop it from sucking them in.

  “CLOSE IT NOW!” Milena screamed to Camilla.

  The Legion Commander began backing away from it in a horrid agreement with her queen, just as unsure of what was happening, shocked to discover the very shackles Midas had melted onto her had both disolved and left her skin raw but as healthy as could have been expected.

  Upon her exit from the stone, she watched in terror as the wormhole began to flux unstably in collapse, the sight of one deathly grey graveyard and its hillside slope apparent on the other side of the doorway.

  Everyone was gazing into the blackened void world as if it were exactly that: a different dimension altogether, a cursed place with land all plagued and corrupted. The lot of them watching through that eyeglass portal as the large ringing blue corona seemed to be shrinking and expanding violently in preparation of its inevitable collapse.

  The portal intensified as it began to recede, starting to pull everyone towards it. The soldiers shuffled backwards in surprise, releasing Arlo and me from knife point. This was our only chance to escape, and we didn’t hesitate. Arlo and I took one look at each other in unspoken agreement, only to push the soldiers blocking us aside and grab each other’s hands as we jumped forward, allowing the vacuum of that dark portal to swallow us both up.

  28

  Truth

  Our fall felt prolonged... As if we had come in at a much higher height than what we had initially dived in from. We broke directly through layers of thin twigs and dry hollow branches while toppling down a leafless and deathly tree canopy, dreadfully awaiting the fiery sting of back breaking impact while we flipped our bodies around and tucked them inwards, preparing for a solid and harsh collision with the unseen shady hillside below.

  Bludgeoned into blackened soil and dirt, we had smacked down against a dark mossy hillside slope, only to continue slipping down the forest’s steep mountainside. Disjointed from each other as we burst through piled barricades of tanbark, twigs and other built up tree roughage without any apparent loss of momentum or speed. The two of us rolling like barrels as we lost each other to our own tumbling downhill rattle roll and the upcoming darkness ahead.

  I was holding my breath in a hope to lessen all imminent pain I was next to feel, always fearing the fierce impact of a solid tree stump surely to be blocking my way somewhere down the line. Only to be luckily but abruptly saved by a soft small sinking mound of extra loose forest soil dropping me halfway down into a pool of lumpy and dry quicksand as it snagged and caught my feet first before I could continue with any more dizzying barrel rolls.

  Content for that moment to lay still in brief paralysis, slowly feeling the tingle of lengthy cuts and grazes apparent across my arms and hips, I was relieved to have just stopped moving altogether and be given the chance to wait out the stinging numbness across my body.

  Unable to find comfort in rest for long though, I started squirming against the powdery soil with a fighter’s resilience before eventually surrendering to it and just accepting my bogged situation for what it was. My thoughts taking over as I fought all further temptation to restlessly struggle and instead temporarily gave in to allow the shallow pit of dirt extra time in suspension as it offered me at least a peaceful moment’s break to evaluate where I was and the position I’d found myself in.

  Clearly, I was stuck in standstill, my figure remained buried down to the elbows and yet luckily about as far as I could sink down, leaving me there until I ultimately decided to calmly try and decompress my way out of it. The long careful process of slowly and lightly swimming my nails through the dirt of both denser side walls while at the same time sinking my feet down till I could feel something more solid to kick up off of, finding the harder ground I could push off of in order to rise up and out from the puffy decomposing heap of unearthed soil I had fallen into, managing to do so with a surprisingly easy level of effort when compared to mindless thrashing about.

  Once I had pushed myself up and out of that tiny square ditch like tomb, I was determined to work out where Arlo and I both were. I took no time in scouring upwards and through the deadly valley treetops in inspection of the vast mountainous hillside plane I had rolled down from.

  I looked up to the fullest and brightest moon I had ever seen in my life. Through the trees to the side of me, far over by a long sideways running cliff was a huge gorge that ran completely parallel to the path we had fallen along. A path that trailed back up to the highest peak of the hill we had just come from, were another adjacent cliff and a second huge drop off point that seemed to lead down to an ocean much like the one above the castle – It was a view remarkably similar to the one you would get from our Capital and its four high-rise corner towers.

  In quick reflection, I started to realise that the only substantial difference to where I was and the Capital I’d just come from was the lack of a castle, its twilight, and an abnormally heavy and loud tide that raged against the rocks below the giant hillside cliffs as much of it channelled inwards and right up the long endless river gorge that separated the low level mainland from the high impervious hills of the mountainous peak I was standing up upon.

  After further comparison of its dead trees and distant hinterlands beyond, the place was too dark, foggy and motionless to interoperate what things were beside me. I had to squint just to focus on what was close to me – typically a thing you would only do when the wind is heavy in your eyes, but in this case there was no wind where I was. No wind at all while I tried inspect the layout of the structures and objects in close proximity of me.

  I couldn’t help but feel like I knew exactly where I was and that I had been in this particular place a million times before. I was bewildered by the fact that everything felt familiar and uncanny to me, and that if it weren’t for a few open clearings of trees and a missing concrete marketplace paved beneath my feet. it would have seemed that I hadn’t changed any location at all.

  I turned back toward the underlying soil I crawled out of, kicking off crushed up old dry leaves from my shoes, finding the ground unnaturally soft and bouncy as it must have helped blanket a great deal of my fall. It was then that I realised what
the covered up rectangular patch in the dirt was and why it was threaded so perfectly between two large old willow trees. This realisation made me tremble long before I looked over to find the small faded tombstone planted at the very front of it, confirming my horrific suspicions.

  I had fallen into someone else’s decomposing grave and that made me scream loudly. I covered my mouth quickly to stymie any further noise. I was in a foreign and wild territory, and as scared as I was, screaming like that was a death sentence while among all the carnivorous nocturnal predators of the dark.

  And so trying to be logical, after a brief moment to inspect the trees for rustles of stalking movement, I sucked up my courage and went over to that willow tree to take a better look at the tombstone plaque and the name inscribed.

  It was made from broken pieces of old mouldy concrete, and it had strange hieroglyphs engraved on it – a language I had seen sketched on some of the walls within the Hotel Capricorn but nothing I could actually understand.

  My fingers firmly touched against the grave as I tried to brush off covering moss, enough to shatter it into crumbling pieces and make me leap backwards in a delayed shock of it falling over. I walked backwards until I tripped against a dark pathing gate that held a paddock of more graves that I near tumbled straight over and into.

  My heart continued to jolt in terror, regardless of where I moved my eyes. I was in an old cemetery after all. Clouded mists of midnight fog began to separate, revealing to me each lurking tombstone and grave.

  I could see them everywhere I looked! Going as far downhill of that gated path as the eye could see. There were countless rows of generic gravesites beside each oak and willow tree available, all of them ashed abundantly throughout that whole hilly graveyard site I was in the centre of.