Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale

by A. L. Brooks

  A network of aqueducts and pipes crisscrossed Autumn’s airspace; the town planners had come up with the novel and very modern method of supplying all abodes with running water. All pipes met at a confluence near the reservoir. The junction of each ceramic pipe were a sculpted form, a torso with a shapely leg, or a chest with an arm, or a head with its mouth gaped. And the entire network were fed from the reservoir.

  The reservoir were presided over by Watchguard. Or at least were, before this blight. It consisted of three colossal spiral shells that once belonged to the three feared Viper Squid that had terrorised the aqua-ships on Deepsound. Their squid shells had been collected from the Skeleton Coast a hundred years gone. The shells’ original inhabitants had long since been slaughtered and diced up and cooked. And the shells a gift to the old giant ruler, Meycheren IV. They were said to be of a magical property, that any water poured into them, no matter how brackish or rancid, would be made instantly fresh and clean and pure.

  Here the shells were perched on enormous granite plinths on the south’n’eastwun district of Autumn. Their enormous mouths yawned open at the heavens, beckoning rain; of course this were primarily how water came to be stored within them. At their spiral centre a large brass tap had long ago been installed and a large pipe ran down from each to the confluence of feeder pipes that served the city. An ingenious set up.

  2

  Gargaron pushed into the abandoned compound through the large iron gate. As he were filling his last gourd with water and allowing his horse a drink, he gazed idly into the street, lost in his thoughts, when he imagined he spied someone.

  It were so fleeting he wondered if he had simply imagined it.

  But as he watched, he were given a fright when some humanoid figure simply and casually strolled past the gate.

  He stopped what he were doing. Not believing what he had seen.

  He climbed down from the granite and strode out into the street.

  There were no-one to be seen.

  He stood looking about. He would have sworn that someone had walked by. But the street lay empty. Perhaps he were so starved of conversation and suitable companionship that his mind were here conjuring phantoms. Unless the after effects of the three kilderkins of Easthills Ale he had poured down his throat were playing with him.

  And yet…

  His eyes narrowed as he spotted something. A shape. A swish of peculiar colour.

  The more he looked the more he realised that a figure were standing in the shade of a mash-smoke parlour. Poised by the wall, its body mysteriously taking on the characteristics of what it were stood against: wood grain, metal window frames, glass that reflected the sunny street.

  A mirror man? he thought. Is that what it be? By Mahis, is it so?

  Gargaron were not sure what he ought to do. The thing did not move. It made Gargaron uneasy, cautious, wary.

  He approached slowly the parlour and then stopped. ‘I see you,’ he declared gently. ‘I see you there. Come out now. I mean you no harm.’

  It were its eyes that betrayed it. Blue, blue like Helfire.

  ‘I am friend not foe,’ Gargaron offered it genially. ‘Please, I’ll not hurt you. Come out from there. I wish to talk. I have been somewhat starved of company of late. Please. I promise you, I be a friend.’

  He could appreciate its reticence. It were said that mirror men were extremely shy by nature. Folk claimed they were the ancestors of the first peoples, the first men, and none too many were left in the world, and the ones that were, remained elusive, not wishing to be discovered for fear of being hunted and their skin harvested; their skin being said to be enchanted, that it could render its wearer invisible. Yet many folk proclaimed mirror men were naught but fantasies of over active imaginations.

  Gargaron himself may have believed as much if he had not witnessed a mirror man as a boy. His father had taken him to a place where he had chanced upon a nomadic tribe who kept one. They were seeking a buyer. They wanted to sell him. They held him captive within a cramped cage of bones. When Gargaron were shown him he could not see him at first, for the mirror man had taken on all the colours and patterns and textures of the cage about him. But amidst a peculiar blur of light Gargaron had seen its sapphire blue eyes. For years afterwards his father had berated himself for not having the asking price for the poor soul, for not bartering harder, for not having the means of taking that sad looking mirror man away from those wretched nomads and setting him free.

  Gargaron meant to take a step backwards to demonstrate he meant no harm, but to his surprise, the thing moved from its hiding place.

  3

  At first Gargaron felt heartened, even excited at the prospect of perhaps befriending this soul, of having someone at last to talk to. But as the being stepped into the sunshine he grew wary and confused.

  The thing that came away from the wall looked not organic at all, but metallic. When it stepped out into sunlight parts of it gave off intermittent sparks, like embers teased by wind gusts. It approached Gargaron. And Gargaron took a step backwards, not out of courtesy this time, but out of caution.

  It were no mirror man, he knew now. This were, as far as he knew, one of the metal abominations built by a sorcerer known as Hawkmoth. Gargaron gripped the hilt of his greatsword and took another step back, and then another. ‘Come no closer,’ he warned.

  The thing stopped and cocked its head. ‘Oh?’ it said, its voice like someone talking through tin, as if some thin film of metal were vibrating. ‘Oh? But I a-ammm friend n-n-not foe. I’ll not hurt yooooo. Come out from there. Come out from there. Come out from… I wish to talk. I have been somewhat starved, starved, staaaarrved… of company. Please. I promise you, I am, I am, your friend. I mean you no harm. I mean you no harm. I mean you no harm. I mean you no haaaaaaarrrghhh…’

  Another flash of burning red sparks burst from its peculiar neck joints. Its head turned leftways, and kept turning, rotating entirely. Gargaron noticed four sets of strange glowing eyes as it went, spaced about its cranial band. He also noticed now it had lost one of its arms. Its head kept rotating, at the same rate, not speeding nor slowing. Gargaron saw a series of numbers engraved into one of its shoulder panels. In harsh block letters it read UJIK-L78 54XX. Were this its designation?

  When its head continued to turn without any sign of letting up, Gargaron withdrew his sword. Gargaron had heard too many troubling tales about these metal men than to feel undisturbed in its presence. He were well aware that in the past year one of them had lost its reasoning in the lake village of Froghopper. It had lain waste to the entire population with what folk claimed were searing beams of fire before incinerating its own metallic head and whatever served as its brain.

  Gargaron stood there watching this mekanik, as some called them. This Ujik. The two heads of Grimah watching it keenly. Gargaron were close now to striding forward and having the damn thing’s head off. He would not end up like those poor sods from Froghopper.

  Its metal skull at last stopped rotating. And it regarded Gargaron for a hefty length of time, before, again, it spoke. ‘I have come in search… I haaaaaave come in search of you,’ it said. ‘A quest q-q-quest set for me by Mastaer Hawkmoth. A quest to fetch the giant he said, the g-giant that wand-wand, that wanders the Steppe, the giant who moves towaaaaaard Aaaautumn.’

  It watched Gargaron, its arm twitching.

  ‘There be no-no otheeeeerrrrrs… no giants left to be found aliiive. None but you… you… you… you… you… you… yooooooooou…’

  It stared at Gargaron. Its arm stopped twitching. It did not move. The lights in each of its eyes faded out.

  4

  Gargaron stood there regarding it, curious, fist poised around the hilt of his greatsword. The mekanik remained still. Were this some ploy? Or were this thing unwell? Had it passed on—in whatever way a mechanical creature might indeed pass on? Gargaron felt a peculiar mix of emotions at this thought. This were the first entity to speak to him, the first words he had heard other than h
is own, in almost eight rotations of Melus. If he believed the tales to come out of Froghopper, this were certainly a creature to fear… But if the Froghopper killer had been naught but a rogue individual? What if, against everything Gargaron had heard or believed, these mekaniks were actually a peaceful entity? If so, here were one such anomaly potentially dying before Gargaron’s eyes. He pitied it all of a sudden. A selfish part of him wanted to prevent it dying, he craved friendship, company, conversation, if that came from something constructed out of enchanted metal and chemicals then what of it?

  He were about to step forward when the lights glowed again in the mekanik’s head and it straightened. ‘Behold, a com-communication fraaa from Mastaer Haaaawkmoth.’ And when next it spoke the voice that came forth were booming and deep, as if from the throat of a grizzled old man. ‘This message be for the ears of the giant I have spied traipsing across Chandry’s Steppe. We do not know each other, yet it seems circumstances might be set to change that. I have dispatched this droyd to track you down. I hope you forgive me if your intention were to remain alone for I appreciate that in this decimated world we now find ourselves that there may be certain benefits to roaming about it and taking what you want when it pleases you. Alas I have sent more like it to other survivors like yourself that I have managed to locate. I make a plea for your assistance as I believe I understand what has caused this Doom. I also believe I know how to overturn it. If you wish to aid me in a quest of great importance, allow this droyd to escort you to my humble abode and I shall divulge further details. Travel safe my friend.’

  With that, the mekanik, or droyd, as the voice had stated, strode purposefully away. Gargaron watched it momentarily, pondering what he had heard and what it were doing. It did not turn back to him but perhaps it viewed him from the blue eyes in the rear of its head.

  ‘Maaaastaer Haaaawkmooooth aaaaasks yoooou to follow meeeeeee. He lllllives away yondeeeeer upoooon Barrrrrrroww Hiill wheeeere the Dead Mannn watches aaaall, beyyyyond Thoonsk, Thoonsk, beyooon Thoonsk and the murrrr, Muuurdered Sea.’

  Gargaron frowned and looked around at his steed, as if for some sort of suggestion as to how to proceed here. But to his surprise, as if Grimah knew something he did not (or sensed something he could not), he were already moving, trailing the metal man. ‘Oh, well as long as you think this be a sound idea,’ he said to the horse. But he could not deny it, he himself were intrigued. Hawkmoth? And other survivors? And the claim, true or false as the case might be, that there were some knowledge of the blight and its method? And of its remedy. Well then, why not trail it? Besides, what else were he to do in this town?

  He had come to Autumn to seek answers and all he had found were death. He had used Skysight to locate the nearest inhabited and unaffected settlement, and strive for it. To uncover nothing but a dead world beyond had shaken him, perplexed him, flummoxed him. Beyond this he had no contingency.

  So, he trailed after the mekanik.

  5

  Apparently, when he had seen the A7-VRIT zeppelin airship floating over Autumn, he had not been dreaming after all. For there on city’s northwun fringe, ten strokes of the clock after leaving the vicinity of the mash-smoke parlour, there bobbed its mighty balloon, trussed to an enormous open-decked gondola which in turn had been anchored to earyth by no less than eight anchor chains, with claw-clamps gripping tree, shrub, footbridge, building, anything with a sure footing.

  ‘Th-thiiiiss way if you pl-please,’ the mekanik spoke as a sizzling burst of sparks erupted from its chest plate.

  There were a ramp already lowered at the back of the landing-boat and any concerns Gargaron may have had about the contraption not being of suitable size to accommodate he and his steed were quickly alleviated. Indeed, Gargaron, once he had strode aboard, found that there were ample room to accommodate he and horse. Lounges thick with felt layered cushions lined its wooden decks. Soft rugs lay across the empty spaces between, roped down by cords strung through eyelets lest a mischievous breeze should suck them off-deck. A wooden liquor bar complete with twirling, twisting bottles of all manner of wine and spirit and liqueur were situated near the foredeck, just behind the pilot’s chair.

  Strange artful designs carved and painted over in the wooden gunwale that ran around the landing-boat’s perimeter were what struck Gargaron. Indeed, if he had been here with his daughter he would have strongly advised her to avert her eyes. The detailed images around the wooden guard depicted many a soul caught in acts of fornication, and the figure head at the front of the landing-boat showed off two lusty, multi-breasted Jayesque females twirled together in an embrace of love.

  This Gargaron now knew, were a decommissioned pleasure craft, where the rich, the affluent, the well-to-do, the decadent, had once paid high price to come and relax and indulge and titillate themselves. They would slurp exquisite Oranjjin wines, sip aged Uloricah brandy and single malt whiskey of Looth. They would nibble at reej eyeballs, pickled veekaan paws, liver of sea-cat, spiced minced plains-goat, and all the while enjoying sweet, alluring pornigrafica as it played out before them: couples, threesomes, foursomes, entire orgies, those of differing sex, of same sex, of differing species, howling and hissing and snarling as they sucked and kissed and fingered and pulled and thrust at each other. Naught much had been taboo up there in the clouds as the great Pornigrafica d’Zeppelin drifted about on Godrik Vale’s gentle airways.

  It had Gargaron thinking. He had quite forgotten the pleasures of the bedroom since the fall of the blight, since he had seen away his beloved wife. And yet the images here did nothing to stir him. Where once he may have delighted in them, here now, with his family decimated, and the world he had known now cradled in death, they meant nothing.

  6

  The mekanik took to the pilot’s chair situated before an operations console that included a series of spherical gas pods from where steel tubes snaked down into the floor and disappeared beneath the wooden decking. These reappeared through a rounded vent encircling the base of the central mast, a mast, Gargaron realised, resembled a wrist and forearm (albeit, ones far thicker and longer than his own). The “arm” jutted straight out of the deck perhaps one and half times his own height where a monstrous hand with a dozen fingers, each segmented by several knuckles, acted as a cage that housed the gas-balloon, each bony finger enveloping the balloon.

  The gas pipes that rose from the floor snaked up and around the arm, ultimately vanishing into holes bored through the “wrist”, and beyond that Gargaron could only guess where they ended: in fluted openings no doubt, at the base of the balloon’s interior where they breathed out whatever mix of gas that enabled the craft to lift from earyth and head for the skies.

  Gargaron observed the mekanik at work. How it twirled hand-cranks and adjusted brass leavers. In short time, the zeppelin awoke hissing and spluttering. Gas pods shuddered, pipes shook, there came the sound of whooping, rushing air and the sounds of the balloon creaking and expanding, taking on gas. The mekanik hauled another leaver connected to a pulley system which both simultaneously unclamped and wound in the anchors.

  Before both Gargaron and Grimah knew it the zeppelin had lifted gently from ground and rock.

  FLIGHT OF THE PORNIGRAFICA

  1

  AUTUMN fell away beneath them: its streets filled with the dead and their silence, loose leaves of disassembled newspapers fluttering and tumbling along gutter and cobbled street, and distantly there came the mewling, somehow victorious sound of the Corpse Flowers, as if by sheer weight of numbers they had overwhelmed the giant and seen him off.

  Gargaron watched all of this drop away. He felt somehow like the sole survivor of a mighty catastrophe being airlifted to safe ground. The only part of Autumn still higher than he were the lonely upper reaches of Skysight tower. Again he could not help but feel that needle, that Skysight eye, watched him.

  As they rose skyward the mekanik turned a hand crank positioned above a clear glass canister; sticky green grime and residue and condensation
were smeared and beaded against its smooth interior. It were a quarter filled with some chartreuse coloured liquid. The mekanik tilted its head and studied it.

  A floor-mounted metal barrel were held in place before the console by large metallic clamps. A flexi-hose ran up from its base to a nozzle and tap which the mekanik now reached out and grasped. It shunted the nozzle into a valve at top of the glass canister, turned on the tap, and pumped a lever at top of barrel. Fresh green liquid gushed forth, filling the canister.

  Once done, the mekanik removed nozzle and hose, and again wound the hand crank situated above the glass canister. Green juice pumped from it through a pipe which split off into two: one running out to port, the other to starboard. Here beyond the gunwale, bolted to wooden seats were what Gargaron at first sight thought were more mekaniks; one a piece on either side of the craft, both facing outwards toward a stunted wing. They were not mekaniks, though, Gargaron had realised. But merely fashioned as such from black steel. The pipes that ran out beyond the gunwales ended stuffed inside the mouths of their faceless steel skulls and once the green liquid chugged into them their long steel legs began to pump objects that looked at the same time to be both feet and pedals. These in turn spun a sprocket that rotated a larger sprocket that wound a set of wooden propellers.

  Once the legs began pumping, as the props soon began to spin in a blur, there came the soft whump of chopping propeller blades and the zeppelin now stopped simply drifting and took on a definite forward momentum. The mekanik hauled the steering rod, shifting rudder at zeppelin’s rear, and the craft turned and took on a more westways heading from Autumn.

  2

  They flew over westwold farming communities, and out across glades of giant tree-fern. They covered several hundred miles even before Gohor and Melus were chasing each other toward distant horizon. Occasionally below, some town or village would drift by and Gargaron would study them eagerly through his spyglass, ever hopeful that survivors remained. But they proved always silent, where no living thing moved, and only the dead populated the streets, some of them lying there with their dead unseeing eyes, gazing up as the zeppelin thrummed by. Some settlements overrun by Corpse Flowers.