by Scott Beith
I evaded all opposition for myself, merely by running. I was never directly targeted by anyone, virtually receiving safe passage as I headed right up the stairs and through the huge doors of my home. My house felt like a dark conclave of candles and grim darkness; an area so foreign and unusual it was nothing reminiscent of the feeling most others get when they finally get to return home from an adventure.
I didn’t feel like I even knew where things were. I entered the dark halls and went through the hallway until I reached and could barricade the dining room. I had seen royal guards bleeding through their armour as they lay lifeless on the floor and the stairs on the way inside. I thought it was best to take no chances as I used every crevice of lurking shadows to come to my aid and turn this house into a forbidden forest as I moulded the chairs and tables into servants that could do my bidding.
Although after turning a table into the shape of a four-legged serpent creature, realising as it moved to scout out the kitchen that servants had been hiding by the counter. It was Jade, Tamara and two cadets committing desertion – all looked up to me within their frightful darkness.
Their night-vision wasn’t as good as mine, but once again my eyes were glowing yellow like I was the grim reaper who’d come for them. I indicated to my friends with one quick pointing finger to go back under the kitchen counter and resume their hiding before my exit.
There was no time to check on them, there was no time for anything. I was an arbiter of two worlds falling into darkness, and I had to keep myself on the task I was entrusted with: keeping both armies from claiming that crystal.
I followed the hallway straight down the bend and up the spirally corner castle staircase. I bounced and vaulted with wings and vines, pulling myself up the railings as much as I was running and jumping up them.
I got at least halfway up that tower spire before I knew I was being followed, hearing the bangs of blasting cannons outside, along with the quietest patter of four-legged footsteps barging into the palace in pursuit. Something that was scaling the walls much faster than any nymph, vaulting right over my head as it beat me towards the top chamber of the Sunspire room.
My immediate entry was hastily yet fearful for good reason, but it followed with an immediate blind and swift back kick as it tried to send me rolling all the way down the stairs and its unsafe edges. That sneak attack was always her signature move, and I knew it was Ebony the second her back paws struck me.
All the same I recovered myself remarkably quickly enough to stand my ground. Lucky to be numb to any new side-pain as I layered myself in the cushy shadows of the first corner to the spiral staircase, sparing the majority of me from her usual brutality.
“You’re too late, Kya,” gloated Ebony as her prowler form began to depress. “You think we’re so stupid that we’d leave the crystal where everyone expected it to be,” she said.
She then pointed towards the lighthouse that Helios was in; a small rounded tower top with a beam of light so bright no gnoll had any chance of getting inside.
Helios was standing somewhere in the middle of the room, unseen due to a hundred tiny shiny metal mirrors and multiple polished glass lenses that helped magnify and concentrate his blinding light downwards.
“You’ve ruined everything you know!” Ebony vented to me aggressively, leaving me to wonder if she was mad enough to go for a kill next pounce, as opposed to her usually sadistic pain inducing swipes. “I was going to be the next queen!” she screeched, slowly losing the rational half of herself to a blood-hungry beast that raged within her.
“This is bigger than both of us, Ebony, and you know that!” I shouted back at her, slowly moving closer to face her wrath head on. “You don’t know what’s really happening here tonight,” I tried to alert her, putting my hands up defensively in approach, hoping there was still a logical and rational side to her that I could negotiate with.
“I don’t care!” she roared as she dove at me, a lashing side swipe I was able to dive from and avoid, only to return to the exact same stand off a moment later.
She didn’t look alarmed that my eyes had shone yellow in the darkness. Instead the two of us just stared at each other, waiting for the other to make a sudden move.
We were both capable of becoming something else – something much darker and violent. “You don’t want to do this, Ebony,” I said to her in warning, watching her legs tense for a second pounce. “Don’t test m–” I began to say, stopped mid speech by Ebony’s lunge as she hurled herself like a rocket towards yet again.
I built a wall of shadow in front of me, bouncy and flexible as she dove right into it. Like an idiot without defence, she bounced and rolled backwards until she banged her head against the stone wall behind her, allowing me at least a few vital seconds in her delirium to stare out and look for the best way to get out and over to the northern lighthouse on the opposite side of this southern castle tower top below the market square.
As with one long leap that was needed, I ran right toward the windows and its heated aerial bombardments, exposed to direct light and explosive cannon fire. I watched the look of fear in Ebony’s eyes as she got up only to see me grow wings and dive right from that very tower’s sidewall balcony.
In the light as wings burnt up and broke apart, I was watched by all underneath me as I glided under a pelting rain and storms. I immersed my arms with my demonic bat wings, spanning them to glide as I attempted the longest and highest base-jump I had ever done before.
Ultimately what I did was beyond stupid, as I would have died if it were not for others helping me. I took flaming arrows into each wing, as well as objects shot upwards from various ascents. I was beginning to dive downwards more into a free-fall, then I was moving forward, but then I was caught by a boy with a violet-flamed jetpack. My good friend alive as he held me, guided me, and handed me his grappling gun, firing it for me before releasing me to slowly incline up the tower wall from the distance I had lost. Such sight of him vanishing as quick as he came, as I saw only his fiery purple pullets provide cover fire for me as Zephyr and him tackled up in the high sky.
I struck the western watch tower wall perch hard and with a sore right arm, had to physically kick and muster enough force to get myself up onto the walkway of the western wall so I could follow it north towards the old coastal lighthouse tower overhanging the cliff and ocean. Helpless but to run and physically dodge fireworks and other arrows as I ran into the reflective light and towards the door of the tower top.
As I ran across to the archers on the southern wall firing at me, I saw Arlo climbing over the wall, he stomped the ground with a thunderous earthquake, in order for them to drop their bows and look at him, clinging to each other so that they wouldn’t all fall off the cliff face during its rumble.
Before I entered inside the lighthouse attic I had arrived at, I took one last moment to breath and gaze downwards at the conflict before venturing inside. Of all things in the pandemonium below, it was seeing Ode that took me by the most surprise – him coming out of the sewers, happily waving up towards me as he rode a scorpion as if it were child’s toy-ride, a mature aged boy who was somehow always humorously oblivious to the severity of every grave situation.
40
Dark Child
With two blinded eyes, I walked into the light. I had lost most of my vision upon entering through that door but lost it all in a heartbeat the moment my hand moved outwards to gently and quietly close the door as I concealed myself inside the tiny tower top. It was in a room full of light and mirrors after all, and without an arm’s length of visibility among the heart of Helios’s radial shine. I was ever so cautious to move inwards towards him and embrace the raw glowing centre glass cage he stood within, while nothing but glare and whiteness surrounded me.
The roof was arched and bent inwards from all five corners as it was elevated at its middle peak, just like it bell-tower counterpart to its east and the watch tower to the west. I had a growing fear, given the circumstances occurr
ing outside, that I only had moments left to do something before the other world’s soldiers were annihilated for good. However, without an ability to look anywhere but down to the floor, it dawned on me that I was looking for a transparent object among a room of unparalleled and endless shine – an object that may well have been invisible to anyone looking for it.
I tried to glimpse and check each corner wall, although that was just as unhelpful, considering every corner was met with one long flat surface mirror that bounced and reflected light from the middle point of origin and endlessly it could find the one open window to fly out of. The heat of such glare being something so strong and bright, by the time it hit the southern window lenses it was focused like a magnifying glass as it came down towards the inner south wall of our city below, striking the gnoll invaders with a yield at least fifty times the intensity of the natural sun.
There were five windows capable of being opened and activated for Helios’s offensive assault – windows that were warped and concaved like reading glasses just so that our king could channel his mild bioluminescence to rivalling a war turret or death ray that rained down upon his enemies.
Lighthouses once used for sailors were sights our poets often symbolised with divinity and hope. I think that was because we liked to pretend it was the wisp guardians above who watched our city from the clouds and were the ones shooting down a beam of blessed holy light that uplifted evil like a cleansing wave of water.
And even though the shine was incarnate of our king and his graceful presence, many seemed to forget that it was his very soul and essence that was being burned and ripped apart, as he aged severely each time he imbued that brief daylight while repelling the alleged demons of the void. The sacrifice he gave while believing he was sending evil apparitions from the shadow world back to the hell dimension they must have crawled out of. Twenty years of personal torture as he scolded his flesh and crisped his bones just so a lie he may or may not have been aware of would remain uncovered.
“My king, you have to stop!” I shouted inwards, walking towards him slowly while waiting for a response, unable to see him through his thick bright white light radius or know for sure if he could hear me through such thickened flawless glass. “Let our soldiers see the faces of our enemy. Let them know who they are fighting,” I continued persistently.
I could no longer see the violence below, but I had already seen enough to know Midas had no chance to oppose us anymore; all of the gold and metal armour he could muster for his troops couldn’t cease the ripping forces of nature like light and sound that oppressed them. It our very own world and its resilient attempts to restore equilibrium that was leading to our victory. Light hit gnolls like heightened gravity, and it was slowly kicking them back to their own world, leaving all those who fought to repress them completely unaware of the fact that their howls were secretly screams of pain and anguish in shrouded disguise.
To me Helios’s divine intervention felt a lot more like a devil casting hell-fire; he was merciless while he endeavoured to maintain that mighty weapon against those below. His glass cage once an object I had sat on top of just so I could view the skyline better. An object of an older age no longer covered up and collecting dust but refurnished and reemployed so that he could smite his enemies right where they stand.
I wasn’t used to the tower looking like it did. Ordinarily it was just an old observation deck: a scenic ocean overlook and a place where rascal kids would venture with their friends for thrills and romance. It had the best views imaginable – visions of the giant cliff side drop to the ocean and its reflective golden reef below, or to the northern window where you could see a line of small valleys and trees before the flatter grasslands of distant and dangerous pollen fields beyond even that.
For once I was glad to be drenched by rain. I came in feeling ok, but after careful advances forward, I was feeling a very strong sense of heat and sunburn against my damp clothes and skin, comparable to nothing other than what I imagined walking across the surface of the sun must feel like. I had been inside a volcano and had felt the humidity of its glacial hot springs, but nothing could relate to what it was to be inside Helios’s private solarium. To walk underneath recently polished white reflective tiles I always figured to be dusty grey, while completely blinded to an intensely growing centre light; it was the very opposite of a snow globe, even if the room might have appeared as one.
It hadn’t occurred to me until I started to feel the heat again, but I had foolishly and rather ironically brought myself into the one place where I was the most useless. Akoni had left me. All his efforts were being reemployed just to keep me safe from Zephyr, who battled him in the unseen sky. That meant I was left alone with the king in his tower, and I was squinting just to see where my next step forward was to be, that was up until I struck my foot into an object that was close range to the cage.
I looked down to see nothing and yet realised at that moment I had found the clear stone blueish crystal that I was looking for. Hesitant and startled to come across it so easily after I had already given up hope on spotting it, as just like that I felt complete once again. That even though I felt hot, flustered and sick while standing in sunlight, I had actually done it. I had found the object of everyone’s lust and affection… but now what? I had to then ask myself.
I was surprised to find it so easy and free of trickery and traps. It was all rather anti-climactic to have literally stumbled and stumped my foot painfully upon it, but what more could I do other than attempt to blankly stare at it upon its finding.
Obviously, it had to have been rushed inside here and dumped once the alarm bell began to ring, but I found it strange that it was practically unguarded while Helios remained too preoccupied with the safeguard of the city below.
But that’s when logic finally got to have its moment in the sun – the crystal was heavy! To move it would have been a ginormous issue with even a fleet of technicians. The fact was, no gnoll, other than Levi, was capable of lifting it.
Upon such idiotic realisation, I tried to kick and roll it like a log. I thought maybe I could roll it out the window, but even then I simply wasn’t strong enough – Ironically, I needed the prince to be with me, but assuming he had probably already jumped the wall and dove down it to retrieve his crystal sword implanted in the wall of the Sunspire tower. It was safe yet dangerous to say that he was already duelling Midas among the city guard and what was left of the evil king’s broken gold animal armada.
I tried to think of what to do, but the proximity to the cage was making my head spin and ache much more than it had before. That migraine beginning to feel very physical as I felt a tug along the collar of my neck, followed by an all too real heave as I was ripped and hurled painfully into the thick western side window, cracking it as I heard chipped pieces of glass fall out backwards down the outer city walls of the castle.
The impact had broken the metallic shutter blinds that blocked the light’s exit from that side, as the darkness of the sky helped clear my vision and expose the figure of my aggressor: a figure I should have known to be in the tiny chamber even before her sighting. The only nymph beside Arlo that was capable of both lifting and protecting that crystal.
“I was too late to save your father from your mother,” Milena said to me harshly, a strong sense of anger and spite in her voice as she pulled me out from the window and dangled me off the edge. “But perhaps I was too early to save you,” she declared in taunt towards me. I was left hanging over the edge for the rest of the forest below to see me. I was pinned under one clasped hand around my neck in a chokehold, all while Milena looked the other way towards her other hand to see if any of her nails had been chipped or splintered in the grapple for me earlier.
“Ever since you were born, you have been a thorn in my side,” she told me, leaving me to take tiny half breaths while I tried to kick at the tower wall for footing. “I gave you every chance. Every chance to work with me… But I guess Delphi was right all along,” s
he continued to vent, my heart beating so loud I could barely hear her voice speaking to me. “If I found it in my heart to let you live, you would only live to replace me… Why I was ever foolish enough to take that chance, I’ll never know,” she added, smiling sadistically as my battle to breathe slowly began to end with my kicks against the wall.
I thought I was dying. Once again I had lost sight and just assumed she had dropped me, but as I regained semi-consciousness, I realised Milena had thrown me back inside and upon the floor, playing with her food before she ate it. The evil queen, leaving me to stew and wallow while sick and blinded by the tower’s fierce radial shine, making it clear just how far she was willing to go to silence me from spreading the wicked truth about Midas and their mutiny against him years ago.
“I know the truth now,” I called out into the general air, spitting blood from the bottom lip I cut from the accidental bite of my own teeth. My only hope in the unseen blindness involving an attempt to bait her into walking out and reveal herself while I coughed and crawled, looking to put my back against one of any five thick corner walls closest to me. “You let his own wife and son believe he was crazy just so you could take his throne,” I sniped at her. “You’re sick in the head, not him,” I added boldly.
“Oh, don’t be so naïve,” she said, her voice coming from somewhere near the ledge. I could just imagine her watching the battle below. “You think I was alone with that decision? We all did what he wasn’t prepared to do... It was always going to end like this. Always going to be them or us,” she divulged. “Do you honestly think those savages are innocent? Believe me, there’s no chance for them to adapt back into a civilized world. The only true mercy we can offer them is a quick and painless death,” she continued, her voice bearing closer to me until her shadow appeared above me, pressing her hands into my shoulders in order to pull me up and back to my feet. “Dear, the harsh truth is that there are evils in the wild far scarier than that sad lot. And that’s why we need the Sunspire.”