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

by Scott Beith

  “You’re the only monster here,” I sullied, trying to pull myself to my feet without her help, only for Milena to push me back to the floor by my shoulders. “The tides are turning, Kya... And you may hate me for all that I have done. But if it weren’t for leaders like myself making these hard decisions, then those creatures from the deep would rise up to swallow the rest of us whole.”

  “Tell yourself whatever you want to believe,” I bickered, “but nothing will change the fact that you would rather destroy another world than lower your own standards of living.”

  Milena dragged me across the floor, my knees sliding along the tiles as she effortlessly pulled me along to my feet, bringing me to the nearby window as she kicked off the shutters and showed me the war battling onwards from below.

  As I stared outwards to watch she pulled me to my feet and started picking out fragments of glass that fell from my dress like sparkling glitter. “Our standards of living,” she tried to correct, staring at me like she was the sole reason I was alive, and that the fact that I wasn’t grateful to her for it came as nothing but an insult. “You honestly think I’m alone in this, don’t you?” All the councillors know, all the officers – even the next queen has had her dealings with them,” she smugly stated, confirming my suspicious about Ebony knowing the truth. “They all know. And yet every single one of them has been willing to withhold that secret for a little piece of something extra.”

  Milena then let me go, allowing me, for a brief moment, to think she was ready to bribe me once again or show me mercy. “Kneel,” she then said. “Kneel and be forgiven,” she repeated… I looked to her, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. And just like that she jumped into the air and with both legs fishtail kicked me forwards, ramming me through the closest mirror, an avalanche of glass pouring over me like hail.

  The room went dark for me, as my life flashed before my eyes, all the memories I had of her passing through my head as if they were being deleted from my mind. The swimming pool lessons she gave me in her backyard Watergardens, the trips she always took me on with the rest of her family, the old orphanage she adopted me from. Every nice thing my illegitimate mother ever did for her dark child, up until that point where she’d kicked me.

  “Don’t!” I pleaded in angst. “Don’t. Please! You’re hurting me,” I cried out again, hoping I wasn’t crazy and there was some maternal side that could melt the rime upon her naturally cold-blooded heart.

  “I offered you gold!” yelled my serpent queen, watching me slither across the ground helplessly, emotional and distraught enough by what she saw to leave me in peace to collect myself. “But now, all I’m going to offer you is your life,” she shrieked. “Just forget what you’ve seen and leave,” she stated.

  “NO!” I shouted, surprised by my own stubbornness and determination to remain while defeated. “I know about your deal,” I added trying to scamper dizzyingly back to my feet but falling back to the floor, failing to find my balance.

  “Which one?” she said with a huff and laugh. “See I’ve made so many it’s hard to keep track these days,” she bragged, pressing her foot into my back just before I could attempt to rise before the window. For her, just an extra moment to peer outwards and keep tabs on the gnolls suffering below on the city streets and battlefield.

  “Was it the one where I promised Ebony my son for her silence? Or the one where I made my son promise his proposal to her to spare you from exile?” she asked wickedly, smirking at me as if to gloat about just how much of my life she had always controlled.

  I strived to still show some resilience, trying to break free from her clutches and crawl towards the door on all four limbs. Stopped as I was pushed and rolled back down, as she then dragged me over towards the seaside window and the giant drop down to the golden reef coastline below.

  “Ebony was actually quite difficult to convince, not too different from yourself. How one stops a rich noble woman without the use of threat or force was tricky,” she said. “And I have to say, I’m almost impressed at how hard it’s been to sway you – maybe there can still be a caravan riches awaiting you if you just surrender now,” she said. “Be a smart girl for once, please. Stop wanting things you know you can never have, and start thinking about all the things you still could have. All you have to do is walk away and be quiet,” she tried to convince me once again.

  With one foot she kicked another window shutter clean off, her hand holding my back as she brought me over the ledge to face the black ocean abyss below. “Time’s ticking, Kya, and quite frankly I’m running out of patience with you. Truth is, give it another hour and your silence is going to mean very little to me anyway. Our land will soon be rid of the gnolls forever – your story will be nothing but a tall tale for others to criticise and laugh at. So… What will it be? Our side or theirs?” she asked.

  “Come on, which is it?” she said again impatiently, slowly pushing me further and further over the edge of the absent window. Her hand holding the back of my dress becoming the only thing that stopped me from falling while I faced the dark side of the tower top.

  She thought I was afraid of the drop. She thought I was still terrified of heights. But given that moment to breathe the ocean air and be enlightened by the lightning in the sky, the shine of my pendant and the rain hitting my hands as I looked down, I suddenly knew what I had to do.

  “My own.” I grinned to her with my own dark smile. Her smug look faded when she saw the vines growing around the ledge as they latched her and helped me jump off.

  I tried to pull her hand down with me, but she was terrified by the sight of the ocean and its drop. She retract her hand in startled fear, ripping off the vines and looking at me in terror as I was left to free fall, taking the thirty full tree-length plunge as I dropped like an anvil into the foggy coastal blackness.

  I gained speed like a meteor, conjuring wings ready to use the drop as a means of regaining altitude against the wind. My sight of the city restored as I soared back up and over the lighthouse of which Milena stared out from. I began circling the lighthouse with the pace of a gargoyle released from its solid-stone form. Only to burst back into the room through the bright southern mirror and smash myself and the queen beside me into the glass cage in the middle, cracking it severely. The room dimmed slightly, as with each mirror I broke on my rampage to punch, kick and smash every mirror I could.

  The whole tower rattled as the light of Helios’s light reduced substantially, increasing every corner of shadow to converge on the glass prism cage he stood in before each figureless entity quickly disintegrated into non-existent fairy dust.

  Milena pulled herself up from a pile of glass and rubble with a genuine look of shock and fear on her face.

  “Honey, what have you doing?” called Helios in astonishment of his bright faltering fluorescent beam.

  Milena lunged at me without restraint or measure that time around, throwing punches and spinning wall kicks as I tried to duck and dodge the vast portion of her blows before leaping back out through the window to safety, circling the lighthouse spire and returning through the broken forest window only to ram the other side of the cage and weaken it that little bit more.

  With the damage the cage and mirrors had sustained, I was capable of conjuring a quick shell to use as a shield while the untamed ferocity of Milena’s strikes and screams were hurled to me in a panicking fluster.

  The power of her attacks were pushing me into the mirrors and crumbling white tiles. Each attack of hers came with its own small micro-explosion of sound, deafening concussive blasts incapable of being contained without at least something nearby breaking.

  Before I knew it, the room was dark and my body was covered in a cloud of armour, serving as my own cage of protective shadow, which I had grown to be bigger than my opponent. Big enough in size to be able to lift up the diamond and club open the cage and the walls as the tower shook and rattled as it came apart.

  Everything in the room was shattering like glass. My o
wn brain protected from haemorrhaging while Milena screamed trying to knock me down.

  I consumed every shadow in the dark collapsing room and built as much cushion as I could to protect us from the roof caving-in. Milena stopped her screams to help as she quickly searched through the shattered glass for her husband.

  I held up the room long enough for Helios to run out. Milena, however, ran only towards me. She dove in tackle, and the two of us went overboard just as the floor broke down from under us. Among all friends and foe below us, the war stopped as the northern corner spire fell down towards the city ground, diving one side from the other.

  I landed on top, building a soft fort of vines and mushrooms to fall upon as the queen and I landed on the second level rising of the walls just slightly above the streets and battleground.

  I figured the bricks and mortar would come down to squash us, but as I turned I realised Akoni was by the south spire with his jetpack, exploding the lethal debris mid-air with his pistol.

  It was like a volcano of concrete had erupted above our heads. The tower crumbled with debris for half a minute, only to follow with complete and utter silence, for us to look down and around and see only the small collection of gold cloaked gnolls around us. Arlo with his recollected sword to Evil Midas’s throat as gold chains were put upon him from our former king – the only individual capable of touching the other king’s skin without threat of auric corrosion.

  In the conflict, I could see lord Ariss had freed himself from the dungeons below, holding a knife to his own counterpart, as the gnolls looked around and had no choice but to discard their silver weapon talons.

  Their disarmament had invoked the frightened citizens within the houses to begin coming out as they and their heroic soldiers gasped in the strange absurdity that was the most unlikely of truths, the sight of claws and unveiled cloaks while the introduction of the shadow world was revealed for all to bear witness.

  “You know what I find most pathetic,” Milena said to me in her own exhaustion from beside me. “That you think you’re different,” she bantered, looking downwards from the lower story inner wall we sat upon, while staring towards Akoni and her daughter who stood up in the Sun-spire above. Their faithful Puppey beside them. “You’re not that far from where I stood eighteen years ago,” she vented, trying to hit my hand away as I leant it to her to help her get up. “We’re are all bad inside, you know... I’ve just lived long enough for it to start showing,” she said in a slow but staggered stand. “Your day will come too,” she warned me.

  But that wasn’t how things are going to go this time around. For Arlo stood before his subjects with one huge decision to make.

  “Don’t be so sure,” I said to Arlo’s mother, her and I watching as her son dropped his sword and knelt down while looking up to Akoni and Anara standing hand by hand in the Sunspire. Nymphs and gnolls all united as they dropped to their knees as well, looking towards Akoni and Anara, their new king and queen.

  As just like that… this tall tale was over.

  Epilogue

  It was many months later when the ground began to rumble once again. A garden quaking under the heavy chatter of veteran soldiers having to overcome the loud ambient sounds of old creaky wooden slats bouncing back and forth as nymphs jumped up and down from their chairs.

  War veteran soldiers laughing hysterically while they boisterously continued banging their bottles against rows of hardtop tabletops, shouting to their neighbours on the other side of the long tables while they inadvertently only added to the overly saturated incoherent rambling of noise encapsulating the field just outside the great scorched hall.

  Acapella had peaked at a rate far louder than the music that was supposed to go right alongside with it. Kneecaps all slapping against the underbelly of the table as five or six long drinking tables ruffled due to the giddy feet of strangers telling other strangers the old stories that came before the new ones.

  Lost cultures and forgotten tribes had resurfaced from distant memories as foreign tales were retold and explained with the most comedic of fashions. The fun and thrill of old enemies laughing over the pure idiocy of how things escalated so badly. Men shouting at the top of their lungs at each other in order to excel over the interrupting side chants being shouted from one table to the next.

  The gnolls played music much louder than what we were used to hearing, but it was necessary to compensate for all those amateur singers who incoherently mumbled along to age-old lyrics they had long since forgotten. The war generals and other noble folk in particular found it hard to stop themselves as they welcomed us upstage to their command table upon our invited entry. Flowers budding from a spring bushland around us as we saw for ourselves the life brought back to the shadow world upon the king’s deposition as the old cathedral ruins were slowly refurbished back into the way of old siren theology.

  Gnolls were excited and cheerful to see us. They rambled charismatically in their seats with our own fellow townspeople as they sat down among them. All of them choosing to commemorate this day as the dawn of the next era, their surviving elders yielding tears in their eyes as they chose to maintain a respectful silence instead.

  It was a truly humble night to be remembered. One of liberty and dignity, freedom to choose what soups or sodas they would like to savour. Many of our own breaking bread with old tribal enemies as they together relearned ancient cooking recipes long since retired.

  It truly was a moment of pride for both societies. The chance to listen to the sounds and symphonies of two altered decades; the loss of talented musicians being one of the greatest consequences due to the age-old civil war.

  I came in with the dignitaries and as we were welcomed like distinguished guests to the first commemoration feast resulting from our truce; the first official celebration announced by Queen Pilly upon her royal coronation only one week ago.

  I sat up on the top level stage with the other elected elders, all of us sitting gracefully before a long rectangular table, two identical blonde-haired queens sitting side by side, sharing a combined admiration and love for King Akoni as they watched him work with his reunited father and write up chemical equations trying to reverse the cryogenic state of all gold statues. Tears in both Pilly and Anara’s eyes to see our new king working to reverse the golden curse that had been placed upon many of the citizens of the shadow world during the dark times they had over the last two decades.

  In the stables just within sight, sat Akoni’s more malevolent mother and father who remained in chains as captives. Fierce individuals probably capable of escape but simply reluctant to do so when forfeiting their thrones meant there was a chance of resurrecting their frozen son and bringing him back to live in a world of upcoming summer.

  I caught a glance of Levi. He was as pale as a ghost, staring at me from the lower level sidelines. He looked to me as if his love had been brought back to life, but he was still very sick and slow to the mend. However, I had been told by his mother that thanks to the help of the good doctor, who was not allowed to return back home until every injured person in this world had been healed, that this man was to make a complete and full recovery.

  His mother sat beside him, holding his hand, as her grandson Avernus held his other, both of them incredibly grateful to have him returned to them.

  There were no words I could use to describe it all, the life and livelihoods that had so quickly returned from absence, the concept of a cosmic balance between both worlds slowly turning us back into the perfect reflections we once were.

  Even those corrupted by greed and power were realising things about themselves they had not known prior. I watched wealthy mercenaries like Belial sit down and laugh with poorer men like Ode and Radament, drinking colas and devouring mixed kinds of mouse chocolates, the strangest of looks Belial had when he looked to the small stature of Ode and compared his face to that of his own.

  It was a pleasure to be alongside such great colleagues and friends – even ones like Lord Ariss
and his crew of crude fishermen and pirates – I couldn’t have been any happier about how it all turned out.

  Old man Cain was invited up to sit beside me, brought here so he could do me one large favour – bring me the oldest and most ancient history books from his own vast collection. The Lorelei Lullaby being the first one I picked up and read through upon his visit. As I found out later, not one single book contained a name or a title to a countess or woman named Nadir. Strange that all I could find were references of myths, fantasies and fables. Unfortunately nothing substantial enough to learn the whereabouts of where my mother might have been locked up and imprisoned within.

  “Don’t waste your life chasing your own shadow,” Queen Pilly said to me before her final hug goodbye.

  Other than that, there’s really not that much else I have left to talk to you about, in regards to your origin. How you came to belong in this world. How unity was found once again with two torn worlds and how these four wondering seasons were made.

  The fact was two societies were more than happy to lean on each other, to share control of the Sunspire and alternate in sequence, mediating the light between both worlds equally so that no one would miss those little life luxuries we all took for granted back in our more privileged days.

  And yes, it is a shame we will never again see just how radiant our world could get when the Sunspire is set to its max. But, overall, there was no better way that it could’ve turned out. How excited everyone gets to be in five months or so. When Arlo and myself get to have a little Avernus of our own to hug and hold.

  To have a boy with a mind like mine and yet the heart of your father. The hardest part is going to be just waiting to find out just how courageous and spirited you will one day become. Whether you’ll be one of the next city council members like myself, or the next Legion Commander to replace your father. What perilous work you might have to do just to undo all the problems and wrongs we caused in the time it took for you to mature.