Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale

by A. L. Brooks

  ‘That I did,’ Hawkmoth told him. ‘I must thank you both for seeking me out. I will divulge details of my plans soon. And inform you what we face. I do not expect you to accompany me on my quest but that is a decision I shall leave you both to make. For now though, we make for my camp and I shall see to your wounds oh giant.’

  They reached a clearing beside another of these deep plunge-holes where a vehicle both Melai and Gargaron recognised hung twisted and ruined against the rock wall. Gargaron eyed it with some curiosity. It were a zeppelin like the one he had flown upon from Autumn. And it seemed it had suffered similar fate. It were broken and twisted and snared on jagged rocks, the bulk of it hanging sideways down into the plunge-hole while its torn and deflated balloon listed far below upon water’s surface.

  ‘Seems flying be left to bats and birdlings and Skinkks,’ Gargaron muttered, looking about, wondering now what had become of the Skinkk.

  ‘And to woodland nymphs,’ Melai added.

  ‘Or else he who fashions a flying craft when he himself does not bare wings ought to be aground when his flying machine grows faulty,’ Hawkmoth stated.

  ‘And he who comes aground upon a plunge-hole,’ came a new voice, ‘ought to have a friend nearby to help pull him out.’

  Gargaron and Melai and the two heads of Grimah all turned and saw a strange being basking atop a boulder.

  He were a humanoid, of sorts, a crabman (as Gargaron knew them), with eight crab legs encrusted here and there in barnacles, and a humanoid torso growing up out of a crab body. He looked like a jovial fellow, Gargaron thought, the way he smiled warmly, and looked ever so comfortable and relaxed where he were perched there in golden sunshine.

  He slid from his spot and skittered over to introduce himself, walking sideways, much as a large land crab might. ‘My name be Sir Rishley Locke,’ he said, removing a twin-horned helmet to reveal a pair of gnarled and decorated horns growing from his skull beneath. ‘And the good sorcerer here has me to thank for hauling him and his horse up out of this here water cave.’

  ‘And “thank you” I believe I have said a dozen times by now,’ came Hawkmoth’s voice.

  ‘And a dozen times I have enjoyed hearing it,’ said this Sir Rishley Locke. ‘After all, coming across a great sorcerer and finding him in peril from which he were having considerable trouble escaping, why it were priceless I must say.’ He laughed, though not derisively, as someone boasting might have. He laughed more as a close brother would, endearingly, warmly. ‘How long were you down there again? Two days?’

  ‘Naught more than a day,’ Hawkmoth attested. ‘And I dare say I would have engineered a way out eventually, with or without your help.’

  ‘But of course you would have,’ Locke the crabman, said throwing a look at the new folk. ‘Now, who have we here then?’

  Both Melai and Gargaron simply watched him, struck by his energy, his mirth, his warmth.

  ‘Well speak, one of you,’ implored Locke with a hearty laugh. ‘Why, a giant silent as a butterfly! By the gods, such a thing has never seen the day has it?!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Melai. ‘We have come through much.’

  ‘And lost all no doubt,’ this newcomer said with a mighty smile, slipping his helmet back on his head, his horns slotting smoothly into his headgear. ‘Oh, we all share the same burden, I think. But we live. And that is what is important. For, if there were none left alive, there would be none to carry forward the memories of all those we have loved and lost.’

  ‘And none left alive to carry out vengeance for their falling,’ Melai said coldly.

  This Rishley Locke cocked his head and smiled. ‘Aye, have it how you will. So, tell me, what be your names and where be you from?’

  ‘They are those, amongst others, that I have been expecting,’ Hawkmoth answered him.

  So the introductions commenced, with handshakes and smiles and more than a share of winces and grimaces from Gargaron, almost falling as he dismounted. With pleasantries done, Hawkmoth said, ‘Right then, giant. Let us see how these Aporil Flutes have seen to your burns.’

  2

  The sorcerer rolled out a thick rug and ordered Gargaron to lay there belly down. Gargaron groaned painfully as he shifted to his knees. And groaned as he placed his hands out before him. Another groan escaped him as he collapsed heavily to rug. ‘B-be you certain th-that y-you extinguished my fl-flames, sorcerer?’ Gargaron enquired through gritted teeth. ‘I feel…’ He swallowed. ‘I f-feel the fire there still.’

  ‘The flames are long blown out, aye,’ Hawkmoth informed him. ‘Pain you now feel be a combination of your burns and the roots of these Aporil Flutes mending your flesh. You may not wish to hear this but parts of your back had been liquefied by the time I found you.’

  Gargaron had not heard him. ‘Where be… where be the Skinkk,’ he asked, exhausted. ‘Did you, did…’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘The Skinkk can no longer harm us, dear giant,’ Hawkmoth informed him. ‘Though we have far more pressing matters to attend to. So lie still and save your strength.’

  Melai watched on, watching the dark soot belch from the purple trumpet flowers. Her eyes moved to Gargaron’s Nightface. A blackened and ruined thing it were now, its eyes dead and clouded over. Her heart. Little did she understand of its purpose, but it were a part of him and she did not know how he would take news of its demise.

  Hawkmoth studied the scene. ‘Mmm,’ he would mutter, ‘Mmmm, yes, good, this is good.’ Though Melai, taking in the glistening craters of burnt flesh, wondered which part of it were good.

  Hawkmoth snipped away the intriguing Aporil shoots and at once their trumpet flowers shriveled. Embedded in the deep layers of Gargaron’s skin, their roots remained however. Hawkmoth took from a large sack a stone jar. He unstoppered it and fingered inside it to pull up a large slimy blue slug. He placed this upon Gargaron’s ruined flesh. It were followed by another and another and yet another. Seven of them in all by the end of it.

  ‘What, what have you there?’ Melai heard Gargaron say. ‘It feels such as ice.’

  ‘Indeed it ought to,’ Hawkmoth told him. ‘I have placed ice slugs upon your wounds. They shall take away heat and pain, and in turn eat of your dead flesh to stimulate and accelerate your body’s capacity for healing and tissue regeneration.’

  Melai saw the pain washing from Gargaron’s face almost instantly. His breathing relaxed, his body threw out its tension. ‘By Ranethor,’ Gargaron murmured, sighing heavily, ‘this be utter bliss.’

  ‘Aye, I thought you may like it,’ came Hawkmoth’s voice. ‘Oh, though I should warn you, they have been known to cause minor sedation.’

  When Melai looked down at Gargaron’s face it were evident he had dropped off to sleep.

  3

  When he opened his eyes, Gargaron gazed out at a perfect blue sky, wondering why he could not detect the visual senses of his Nightface. He knew not where he were, nor how he had come to be here. There were no sounds of birdlings nor bugs. But he were aware of sounds of gentle breeze playing through trees, the peaceful rustle of leaves. And that of a child’s voice.

  ‘Veleyal,’ he whispered. He lifted his head and looked about for his daughter.

  What he saw staring at him were the face of an enormous, banded serpent. Its mouth opened sideways rather than downwards, and three sets of eyes on either side of its skull goggled at him. Its forked blue tongue lapped in and out, tasting him.

  He thrust his arms at it, shoving it aside and rolling onto his haunches, clambering away.

  The serpent reared up in the position of a snake poised to strike. Gargaron reached for shield and sword but found he were unarmed. He scrambled backwards hoping his hands might chance upon some stick or rock with which to defend himself. Failing that, he prayed for a tree behind which he might retreat and use as a defensive barricade.

  Suddenly, filling his ears, came the booming sound of thumping hooves on earyth as Grimah charged into view, putting himself between giant and s
erpent. Some voice rang out. The serpent hissed. The voice called a second time, more forceful, and now the serpent lowered itself and turned away, its blue tongue still flicking in and out in rapid bursts.

  Gargaron saw the crabman now, whose name he could not recall. Beyond Grimah he stood ushering the serpent away. Grimah turned and lowered himself to his knees, nibbling Gargaron’s neck affectionately with his pair of mouths. Melai flew down from some high perch in the trees.

  ‘By Thoonsk,’ she said sounding relieved, as she landed before him, ‘at last you awaken.’

  Gargaron breathed heavy, still expecting an attack. ‘What by Thronir be that thing?’ he hissed, looking wide eyed at the serpent.

  ‘It be Zebra, my loyal steed,’ the crabman called out jovially, fixing and tightening the straps of saddle bags that hung down the sides of the serpent’s flanks. ‘She meant you no harm giant. She be merely curious.’

  Gargaron took in two or three deep breaths, blinking, looking about, still orientating himself. He felt something squeeze his arm and remembered Melai standing at his side. He looked at her.

  ‘All be well,’ she said to him, ‘all be well, you are safe.’

  He drew in a deep calming breath before shutting his eyes and kneading some feeling back into his brow with his large fingers. ‘How long have I been in slumber?’

  ‘The suns have set and have since risen,’ Melai told him. ‘We could not wake you. Haitharath hoped to have left by now but decided we could do naught but let you sleep.’

  ‘Besides,’ came the crabman’s voice again, laughing. ‘You are a heavy lump. Not even Hawkmoth has a spell to heft you atop your horse.’

  ‘Hawkmoth?’ Gargaron enquired as if most of his memory of yesterday had failed him. Suddenly the sorcerer in question approached, carrying both a stone bowl of fruit and sizzling crispy bacon and a steaming mug of tea.

  ‘Eat,’ the sorcerer told him, ‘drink. Win back some strength and when you can stand, come over to camp fire and I shall outline my plans as I have explained them to Melai Willowborne. You can both then decide if you wish to be part of them.’

  4

  Gargaron were on his feet before he had finished his tea. And looking about helped return to mind much of what had transpired the previous day. He saw the plunge-hole and took in the clearing Hawkmoth had set up camp within, he noted sandy woodland otherwise surrounding it, and if he looked east he could just spy the tall spires of Varstahk poking above the tree line.

  Glad I am to see the back of that place, he thought.

  His eyes settled upon an enormous blue-grey steed, nibbling chaff on the opposite edge of the camp. Gargaron thought it were a mirage at first, some illusion, so ethereal did the beast appear. This blue-grey horse looked even larger by first impressions than that of his Grimah.

  ‘That be Hawkmoth’s steed,’ Melai told him. ‘Razor be its name.’

  ‘A majestic looking animal to be sure,’ Gargaron commented, wincing as he shifted his weight. ‘How are my burns? I no longer feel them. I am either healed, or I am so disfigured and injured that my body has grown numb.’ He gazed down at his body noting he were in a fresh set of clothes which he last recalled had been folded and stashed neatly in his pack.

  ‘They are healed,’ she informed him. ‘You have Hawkmoth’s slugs to thank.’

  He stretched, reaching his arms high over his head, screwing up his face in the effort. ‘Well then, I will be sure to kiss each one as a show of my gratitude.’ He relaxed and yawned and blinked and Grimah, refusing to leave Gargaron’s side, nuzzled the giant affectionately.

  Melai smiled. ‘I shan’t miss witnessing a giant kiss a slug.’ She gazed up at him, her pale green skin almost aglow beneath the wash of gentle morning sunlight.

  Gargaron reached up and rubbed his steed’s long noses. ‘And I see I have been reclad.’

  ‘Aye.’ Melai pointed to a mess of charred and flaking cloth and material piled on the edge of their camp. ‘They were mostly burnt from you. We dressed you in your spares. I hope you do not mind but I insisted.’

  He shook his head and smiled. ‘I do not mind. Thank you. Where be my pack, by the way.’

  Melai pointed to a pile of their belongings. ‘All’s there. Nothing were burnt.’

  He moved over, Melai following on one side and Grimah on the other. He saw both his sword and hammer hilt lying there. Along with his shield that were scorched black. And a scabbard he did not recognise. Melai explained that it were the sorcerer’s. Given over to Gargaron’s use and possession. ‘Yours were burnt to cinders,’ she said. He crouched, untied his pack and began picking through his possessions. He were focused on naught else until he located the tablet portrait of his girls. He sighed, clenching it longingly, briefly studying it. He slotted it carefully back into his pack and heard Melai ask, ‘Be they your wife and daughter?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘May I look?’

  He were tentative at first. Not because he did not wish for her to see them but purely because he felt a slight guilt for Melai’s own loss, that he had at least some keepsake with which to remember his girls when Melai had none.

  He withdrew again it and passed it to her. She took it gratefully and cast her eyes over it for some moments, wrestling for viewing space as Grimah prod its enormous heads down for a peek. Gargaron nudged his faces gently aside and pointed to the etchings. ‘This be my ever loving wife, Yarniya. We knew each other as children, and were lovers when we came of age. And this be my Everlight, my heartbeat, my daughter Veleyal.’ He smiled sadly. ‘They were my world, my life.’

  ‘They’re both beautiful,’ Melai told him softly.

  He could do naught but nod. Anything else may have brought tears.

  She handed it back, thinking now of her sisters, longing for their company. Though her thoughts were not on them for long. As Gargaron placed his portrait carefully back in his pack Melai could not help but notice the charred rear portion of his skull. As he put his pack aside he saw her expression.

  He frowned. ‘Something troubles you.’

  ‘Gargaron… I… I need tell you.’ She did not know how to put it.

  ‘What be the matter?’ he enquired of her gently.

  ‘Your… your Nightface.’

  He drew in a deep breath and nodded. ‘I fear the worst. I no longer feel it there. It did not alert me to the serpent.’ He swallowed. ‘Be it burnt?’

  ‘Aye, severely. And has not healed.’ She reached up and grasped his hand. ‘I am sorry.’

  He smiled mournfully down at her. And tenderly placed his palm against the side of her head. As he would his daughter. He were touched by her concern. ‘Naught can be done about it. Though, many of my kind have lost their Nightface and gone on to live full lives.’ It saddened him, but it paled in comparison to the loss of his girls. And for this reason alone, emotion aside, he felt rather pragmatic about things. He let out a long breath and put his hand around Melai’s shoulder. ‘Come, let us see what this sorcerer has in store for us.’

  5

  ‘How fare you, giant?’ Hawkmoth enquired, sitting cross-legged on the ground smoking a pipe.

  Gargaron stretched his limbs, took in a deep breath. ‘Aye, better. Though a bit sore, I must confess.’

  ‘Good,’ the sorcerer replied. ‘If you feel pain then it means you live.’ He ushered Gargaron to a spot before the hearth of his campfire, though mostly the flames here were gone, replaced by naught but embers.

  Gargaron sat, following Melai and the crabman. There were an air that now with an extra two folk to his party, Hawkmoth were ready and eager to explain why he had summoned them all.

  ‘I am hoping more survivors, like yourselves, will find us and join us in the days to come,’ Hawkmoth said repacking his pipe. ‘But for now I fear you may be all who have bothered to answer my call. Or you are all who survive. So, before I set off on my quest, before you make a decision on whether or not you wish to follow me into the mouth of doom, then I ought tell you wha
t I believe is going on and offer you some history that brings Godrik’s Vale, and perhaps even Cloudfyre, to this dire point.’ He lit his pipe with a stick pulled from the coals. ‘So, without further delay let us begin, shall we.’

  6

  ‘You may or may not have heard of the Battle of Rabbit Flat. Not many have. It remains buried under the sheer weight of Cloudfyre’s long history. And you’d be forgiven for overlooking it were you reading through the annals of Godrik Vale’s past days and happened to chance upon it. It were not a large stoush, casualties were few. But it were the catalyst for what I believe we now face.

  ‘A century before the events at Rabbit Flat, which itself now lies three centuries behind us, the sorcerers and witches, who have long been enemies, were allies. We discovered magic together, practiced it together, and intermarriage between our two sects were common. But somewhere along the way, and there are none now that live who remembers why, something came between us. My Order will tell you that it were the witches who perpetrated some heinous crime against the sorcerers. And the witches will say it were us who did them some great injustice. All I know for certain is that from somewhere, unrest spread and before we knew what were happening, we were at each other’s throats, they our sworn enemy, and we theirs.

  ‘Thus strife and turmoil between both our groups became the order of the day. And as the years drew on, attacks and skirmishes perpetrated by both sides escalated. But rarely did mighty battles play out; for the most part it were a protracted war perpetrated by guerrilla attacks. The sorcerers taking out a tribe of witches here, the witches eliminating a ranging party of sorcerers there. It were tit for tat, reprisals, pay backs. Until Rabbit Flat.

  ‘At the time, the head of my Order, Master Stormcrake, devised a secret mission to infiltrate Vantasia, the hidden witch city, and take off with witch Goddess, Mama Vekh. To execute this he set about creating a diversion. He sent battlemages down to the southern ranges to overrun Rabbit Flat, a town sympathetic to the witch cause, but also a town that were a key strategic location for the witches.