The Fallen

by R. L. Drummond

  “Isn’t she beautiful, Baldur? Our daughter…Reya…”

  Even when the light faded from Ana’s eyes, her smile still remained and Reya sobbed from within herself as Baldur pressed his forehead against her mother’s. Reya ached to embrace her mother as the midwife stood up and left the room quietly, leaving Baldur alone with his daughter and wife, lost within his convoluted world of agonising joy.

  Reya’s eyes opened blearily and with the sticky fluttering of slumber came the ghost of her mother’s voice, “Isn’t she beautiful, Baldur?”

  She was overcome with an empathetic woe then, not for her own misery at witnessing her mother’s death, but empathy of the utter heartache her father must have gone through. Tears spilled down Reya’s face silently when she recollected the sheer adoration that had been in her father’s eyes as he had looked at her mother. She remembered the sensation within her father’s mind; that never before had there ever been any being as wonderful as Ana, that he had been so in love with her it had ached like a bruise upon his heart. And as Reya’s face crumpled with renewed sorrow, she pressed her palms onto her eyes and shuddered with the sobs that felt too large for her chest.

  How much agony have I brought into this world? She wondered, a thought that formed no words in her mind but emblazoned insistently across her heart. How many more people are going to suffer because of me?

  When she and Tellan had arrived at this village – some mining community with the hideous nickname of The Cauldron – news of Ilema’s near destruction had reached the mouths of the heralds and Reya crumpled in her uncle’s arms with the enormity of its gravity. Belial had been true to his word and had sacked the city in search of her, and from the echoed cries that resounded off most of this village’s corners, many lives had been lost.

  “Come on, Reya.” Tellan had said, dismayed that she took the enormous responsibility of Belial’s rage onto her fragile soul.

  “We have to do something!” She had argued plaintively, yet uselessly and as Tellan had taken her arms and stared into her face, she had found his blank expression incredibly disquieting.

  “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “But he killed all those people!”

  “And he will kill millions more if he captures you.” Tellan had replied firmly and even though he had patted her arms softly and swallowed the bitterness of his words, Reya had been shocked to the core when he had added almost guiltily, “It’s the harsh reality of war, my love. Sometimes great sacrifices have to be made.”

  But Reya couldn’t bear the burden of such unspeakable torment, the hideous knowledge that such death and destruction was laid at her feet, irrespective that Belial’s actions were his own. She felt as though she had done as much damage as the demon prince had, even more considering all she had to do was simply exist for pain to come calling like the angel of death. Even now in this temporary haven Tellan had brought her to she felt there was no safety, either for herself or for the people who lived here.

  She swung her legs slowly off the bed, leaning forward with a heavy sigh that came from as deep as her toes, and with this action came a stirring from the arm chair that had been pulled towards the end of the bed. Reya glanced sideways at her uncle and for once she didn’t smile fondly at him; asleep as he was, his un–gauntleted hand still grasped the hilt of his bastard sword across his knees, and his dagger was laid upon the armchair’s arm rest. Prepared for instantaneous battle even in slumber, Reya wondered if he had gotten any real sleep at all.

  She wasn’t one to talk either; between the nightmares and the guilt that ate away at her constantly like vinegar acid, Reya’s exhaustion was stacking terribly and she knew that her temper had become unfavourable because of it, to say the least. She rubbed a hand wearily across her black rimmed eyes and as she cracked her neck with a sigh, she swept her gaze around the sparsely furnished room.

  Tellan had propped a chair below the doorknob – his overcoat shrouded upon it – and a turned wooden candle holder had been wedged tightly within the shutter frame at the window. The rug in the middle of the small room was little more than a tangled collection of mottled, age–dulled threads, so worn it was, and the wardrobe in the corner was so rickety that it was only fit for firewood. It was also no surprise that the inn was called the Coal Bucket; everything within this blasted village was covered in a layer of soot that grated on Reya’s nerves.

  When Tellan stirred again Reya finally stood up and moved towards the shutters, craving a little light to cast a shred of happiness into this dead room. She tugged on the candle stick a few times, but it had been wedged in so tightly that it didn’t budge even so much as an inch and so she simply stood there, defeated in misery and on the edge of tears.

  “Let me.” Tellan’s voice rumbled sleepily from behind and as his hand came over her shoulder, Reya’s stance remained as it was.

  Through the periphery of her staring vision, she saw Tellan pull the candlestick free with a jumping of powerful forearm muscles and only when he pulled the shutters open did she finally smile. As much as the clouds roiled with an iron dark promise of a storm, it was still a little morsel of freedom to look outside and she sniffed the bitter tang of impending rain savouringly.

  “Don’t stand too close, Reya.” Tellan said, and with that instruction came the death of Reya’s timid happiness. Her melancholy rolled into her bruised spirit with the rumble of thunder overhead and the rain that soon followed in heavy droplets soaked the last shreds of her hope.

  Tellan stood and watched that little honey coloured cloud of hair, bowed so low into her chest that he could feel the dejection from her in waves. He placed his hand onto her shoulder and murmured, “It’s only temporary, my love. Until Jenko comes.”

  Reya huffed shortly through her nose, a humourless laugh that tugged painfully at her mouth. “What makes you think he’s coming?” She muttered gloomily under a titanic boom of thunder.

  Tellan blinked at the uncharacteristic hopelessness in her sullen voice and he replied at a hushed murmur, “He’ll be here.”

  “He’s probably dead, you know. Just like everyone else.”

  “Reya, you can’t think like that.”

  Reya’s eyes flashed up to him angrily then and as she shook her head in frustration, she retorted, “Can’t this, don’t that, mustn’t the next thing. What’s the point?”

  “That’s enough!” Tellan rapped suddenly and his harsh tone actually made Reya blush guiltily. There was a solid silence between them then as Tellan stared at his niece incredulously, her disconsolation almost intensified by the harsh flashes of lightning that inflamed the clouds.

  When she dropped her gaze with embarrassment burning in her cheeks, Tellan sighed shortly through a solid jaw and murmured guiltily, “I’m sorry.”

  Reya shrugged in response, a juvenile bunching of her shoulders that told Tellan she had reached a point where her mood was no longer simply ill temper, but there was a hopelessness there that spoke against her reason. He shook his head at his own response then: right now she needed him to be the adult, to offer her the stability that she couldn’t grasp for herself and snapping at her didn’t do that in the slightest.

  He held his arms out silently then, a quiet offer of truce that Reya stared at uncertainly for a moment, before she turned fully and flung herself against him with a sigh of gratitude. Tellan squeezed her tightly and rocked her habitually as he had always done, his lips pressed against the silkiness of her head as his eyes fluttered in sorrow. Reya‘s slender shoulders shuddered in his tight embrace and with his cheek placed so gently upon the top of her head, Tellan encouraged as much of her poisonous woe out of her little frame as she could manage. He stroked her back tenderly, his eyes closed against the hushing sobs that puffed warm sorrow through his shirt and he struggled against the empathetic emotion that swelled in his throat.

  If only he could just pick her up and take her away from all this heartache, but Asgardian though he was, he was no god; all he could do now wa
s let her sorrow flood from her in a great cathartic purge and hope she would still have the strength to go on.

  Eventually her crying subsided into tiny sniffles muted against his chest, but Tellan still stroked her back and swayed softly with her, a silent reassurance that he was there for her. Reya was more grateful for his strong stoicism now than she had ever been and as she clung to him, she wished with all her heart that he would stay with her forever.

  “Uncle Tellan?” She whispered softly and after a moment, she finally raised her head from the security of her uncle’s strong chest and looked up at him.

  “Yes, sweetheart?” He muttered as he gently brushed the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, a hushing anchor for Reya’s injured heart.

  “Promise me you won’t die.” She said and her mouth twisted with the terrible anguish such a possibility wrought upon her, “I couldn’t bear to be without you.”

  Tellan looked into those huge, violet eyes, wet with such anguish that it stabbed at his heart and he tenderly brushed his hand down her hair. “I’ll never leave you, Reya.” He oathed with heartfelt conviction.

  Reya blinked with a soft smile and as she placed her head back upon his chest, she couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t promised. But how could he possibly? A voice in Reya’s head said and she closed her eyes with a gentle sadness at how true such an observation was. All Tellan could do was cradle her head and wish with every fibre of his being that he really could live up to the meagre offer of his guardianship, that somehow he would always be there.

  Outside the heavy rainfall thundered down on The Cauldron’s soot stained streets, filling every ill–mended pothole and cart rut with an oily black soup that streamed down every well–trodden trail and road. Dirty water sloughed down the mismatched roof tiles of every building, dumping sooty torrents down rundown gutters, and the hapless population trudged through the storm with a sombre familiarity.

  The ominous roll of thunder heralded a flash of lightning and with the flare of its incredible light, came the matching flash of silver pupils. Belial’s servant stared unblinkingly up at the open shutter of the Coal Bucket’s dreary exterior, heedless of the flooding rainwater that plastered his white hair against his head and pinged off–key in the dents of his abused armour. He stood there motionlessly, staring with the dead eyes of an ancient monster at his quarry, nestled tightly in the arms of the man he had once called brother in another life. But there was no recognition or recollection in those cold eyes that stared so unblinkingly at his master’s prize and as he stepped back into the shadow of the alley way behind, still his eyes remained speared upon his target.

  “Here, you’ll catch your death standing out in this!” A voice cried out cheerily and from the gloom of the storm came a small, elderly man, his collar hiked up high around his neck to keep the rain out.

  But the soldier remained unmoved, for the smiling man’s cheerful yet inconsequential greeting didn’t even register on his instinctual hearing.

  “Come on, sonny,” the old man persevered kindly as he hobbled closer, “let’s get you inside, eh?”

  When the old man’s hand touched the soldier’s corded bicep with the barest of grasps, the soldier’s eyes snapped onto the old man with a venomous hiss of primordial anger. Deadly silver flashed brightly in a colourless face then, an empty expression that somehow delivered the horrifying secrets of death and inhumanity, and the old man cringed with a cry of fear. The soldier’s hands whipped upwards onto the old man’s head and twisted so harshly with the cracking of bones that the expression of shocked fear became frozen on the old man’s suddenly lifeless face.

  In the darkness of shadow and under the eaves of a ramshackle rooftop, the soldier swept his gaze back up to the opened shutter above and watched his prey with relentless duty. In his hands the old man still dangled like a string–less marionette, held heedlessly by his broken neck and there was no remorse whatsoever within the hollowed soldier.

  With a great sigh of resignation, Reya spread her arms along the rough, unsettlingly sticky surface of the long table and placed her head wearily upon her upper arm. She was so mired in her melancholy fugue that when someone bumped her roughly as they sat on the bench beside her, all she did was flutter her eyelids heavily.

  “Sorry, pet.” The man grumbled insincerely as he settled onto the bench and in response, Reya simply grunted.

  She swallowed nausea as the man began feasting on the bowl of horrific stew he cradled like the most precious of cargo, a mess of grey gravy and questionable meat that Reya was sure still sported fur. She sighed and sat back up at the man’s hideous eating manner: loudly smacking his lips and sucking each mouthful before a gulp that sounded almost painful. Reya turned her head in search for her Uncle Tellan with a mouth twisted in boredom and, when the pig beside her swept up a tankard with a grotesque slurping gulp, she wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  Her abrupt slapping of palms upon the table brought the attention of many weary faces, all of them filthy and unkempt, and Reya stared unconcernedly at the glowers of disapproval she saw there. She stood up slowly, commanding the fledgling pride she had inherited from her father as she maintained her glance and as she walked away, she was aware of the whispers and murmurs that followed her back.

  This place was utterly disgusting, more a hovel than it was a community with its mucky roads that were nothing but foot trodden trails and everything was covered in greasy soot. Reya hugged herself as she wished fervently that she could go back home; she hated this place so much and resented Tellan that he had brought her here.

  She walked about the Coal Bucket’s main room almost aimlessly, watching the denizens of this place out of the corner of her eye as they shovelled their food into their mouths. All of them lined up in their rows, dirty faces and dirty hands slopping up their meals in a rush as though this was their last. They were even dressed the same, Reya realised as she walked on through the pig pen; it was impossible to tell who were male and who were female. The occasional lewd glances at her ankle boots were a clear indication, but rather than be frightened of such attention as she had been back in Ilema, Reya found it very tiresome indeed.

  The gloom of her face momentarily lit up at the sight of a small, reasonably well secluded table around the corner from the bar – which seemed to be staffed by whichever patron happened to be closest – and as she walked towards it, she caught sight of Tellan speaking furtively to someone. Reya watched him carefully as he straightened up with a decisive nod at the person with whom he spoke and she recognised the face of one of the maids. Tellan grinned when he caught Reya’s eye and as he politely parted from the maid’s company with a kind hand upon her shoulder, he was entirely unaware of the girl’s dreamy expression that followed him.

  Reya sniggered as Tellan made his way towards her and when they sat down at the small table together, he smiled at her amusement. “What?”

  But his niece simply shook her head and replied, “Nothing.” She then glanced around briefly with a sigh and asked, “Is he here?”

  Tellan’s lips were a thin line as he echoed Reya’s glance and said, “Not yet. But the maid gave me some other information that troubles me.”

  “What is it?”

  Tellan leaned in closer and replied in a surreptitious murmur, “Apparently someone went missing last night, an old man by the name of Gorg.”

  “In that storm?” Reya gasped and she shuddered at the implications behind such awful news, “Perhaps he found shelter somewhere else?”

  “Perhaps.” Tellan replied with an unconvinced tone, “Either way as soon as Jenko arrives we should go, I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

  Reya’s eyes widened at the ominous implications of Tellan’s words. “You think…Belial is here somewhere?”

  Tellan’s eyes glanced back to hers and he replied somewhat reluctantly, “Like I say: I don’t want to leave anything to chance.” He then glanced up at the bar suddenly and when he turned back, he place a hand upo
n Reya’s shoulder, “Wait here, my love. I’m going to see if there’s any other way through the coal valleys than the trade road.”

  Reya nodded silently, her eyes still wide as her morose mood was replaced with heart squeezing anxiety. She was so fearful that she almost stood up when Tellan did but, heeding his order, she sat back down and her fingertips played nervously across her lips.

  Her eyes had drifted off into a horrible, sightless daydream of Tellan’s portent that was so swallowing, she didn’t even register that someone had approached until they plonked down heavily onto the bench beside her.

  Her head whipped around at the vibration of the person’s sudden arrival and as the man’s legs were swung up and onto the table with crossed ankles, Reya’s shocked glance found Jenko’s buccaneer grin.

  “Fancy meeting you here!” He said jovially.

  “Jenko!” She cried and without hesitation or consideration of whether or not he would have welcomed such attention, she launched herself at him with a cry of happiness.

  Jenko huffed a surprised chuckle as Reya wrapped her arms around him and for a moment, he patted her back in an awkward acknowledgement of her greeting. But within the sincerity of her embrace was the gift of her affection he had longed for, and Jenko’s eyes closed briefly as he reciprocated her warmth.

  When he spied Tellan at the bar however, his demeanour changed instantly and as he removed her arms with a clearing of his throat, he grumbled, “All right, all right. I’m not a climbing frame.”

  But Reya saw through his gruffness and even though she affected a nervous retreat with a mumble of apology, she winked at him roguishly with a grin of her own in a call of his bluff. In spite of his mask of grumpy reticence however, Jenko couldn’t help the ticking of his lips, amused that Reya had finally begun to understand his mannerisms and accepted them for what they were. Maybe there is some hope for her after all. He thought wryly.