Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (31 page)

Melai were quiet. She wished to be
nowhere near this dragon. Rjoonds were the enemy of nymphs, or so
she had grown up to learn, but dragons were the destroyers of
woodland realms like Thoonsk. Her willow trees had told tales of
Gone Days when dragons had unleashed their fires upon Mother
Thoonsk. How Mother Thoonsk’s children had blackened and bubbled
under their thunderous firestorms. Horror tales she wished never to
hear again. And did not wish to see with her own eyes.

‘
We must go nowhere near it,’ she
said at last. ‘It feigns death.’

Gargaron held the beast in his
spyglass for a prolonged period. Its chest did not rise nor fall.
It were still. ‘All signs point to it being deceased.’

‘
It feigns death. I feel it. We
turn around and find another way.’

‘
Turn around?’ Gargaron would have
laughed had he not been trying to maintain an air of quiet. ‘What
route would you have us take, Melai? This city be a rabbit warren.
We got ourselves lost simply reaching this point. We find ourselves
lost again we might just consign ourselves here till the end of our
days.’

She did not answer. But being in such close
proximity to this dragon chilled her.

Gargaron studied the beast’s scaly
face. Spiked horns jutted from its head. Fangs ran down both sides
of its great and hideous mouth. And all the while its lizard eyes
stayed shut. Skinkks were cunning beasts, he knew. If this one had
heard them approaching then in all likelihood it were lying there
feigning death as Melai warned. Waiting, hoping for them to attempt
a pass before it jumped awake and breathed upon them an explosion
of fire.

Gargaron imagined if Melai’s wing
were well enough, she might take flight and soar beyond it,
distract it somehow, enough time for Gargaron to sneak up on it and
strike it a deathblow with his great sword. Extracting blood as it
lay dying would make for far easier and safer work. And once it
were dead there would be easy passage out of that place. He looked
down at her where she sat before him on Grimah’s shoulders.
‘However we do it, we must think of a way to press on. To turn and
follow our tracks back out of Varstahk and then skirt this city
will add an awful amount of time to our journey.’

‘
And to press forward at this
point may end our journey all too soon,’ she insisted.

‘
Still, find a way forward, we
must.’

Ears on both Grimah’s heads were
drawn back. He would not stand still, though Gargaron implored he
remain so, and quiet, least his clopping hooves wake the
beast.

Gargaron noticed Melai sorting
through her leaf sling, whose vine-like branches clung to her like
wiry tentacles. He wondered if she had heard him. ‘Melai, do you
heed me? We cannot remain here and we cannot turn
about.’

‘
By the Drowned Angels, shoosh!’
she hissed at him. ‘Do you not hear yourself? I’m surprised you
don’t wake the dead with that booming voice of yours.’ She gave him
a scolding glance, this tiny little mouse of a creature staring him
down. She returned her attention to her satchel.

Skinkk continued to lie there,
dead by all reports. Cool desolate winds continued to moan through
Varstahk’s vast network of ruins.

At last Melai pulled something
from her bag: the small clump of dark wood Gargaron had seen her
pack into her sling back amongst her home trees in Thoonsk. ‘What
are you doing?’ he asked her. He hoped miraculously that perhaps it
were some mighty dragon horn; he had heard of such items, ones that
could command dragons.

‘
You insist our
only way is forward,’ she said shortly. ‘So here be our solution.’
She held the object out to him. ‘This be a
monstrut hoegeth
.
House of Monsters
. It be
a holding of elfstar wood. It keeps dormant what you might know as
Charon’
s
Children.
’

3

Gargaron breathed in heavily,
taken aback. ‘Charon’s Imps?’ He looked down at her as if she were
but a demon seated there. ‘Impossible.’

‘
You have heard of such critters
then?’

Charon’s Imps were stuff of myth
and legend. Stuff of horror tales. They were said to lie dormant in
deep, lightless ocean trenches off the mysterious Senoogras Isles.
How Melai had come by them were a complete mystery.

Their origins lay beyond
Cloudfyre. Nine thousand years ago, during dominion of the Skinkks
who ruled over Cloudfyre in those times, the Droplets of Charon,
segments of a moon legend states once orbited Cloudfyre, had
crashed down through the atmosphere. These were times before the
Joo Joons and Mookijuks and Forest Nymphs; before Sorcerers, and
Oldwuns, and Wraiths, and Cahtu walked Cloudfyre; days when
kingdoms such as Vonyael, and Liliyahd, and Skygarden, were yet to
rise and fall; when clans such as the Witches of Nooin, the Elves
of Highlanding, and the great Wraiths of Nightfall were yet to
fight out their legendary wars; when even the eventual riders of
the Skinkks, the Xerbs (all who died out when the dynasty of the
Skinkks collapsed), were still to climb up out of the snowy wastes
of Tunddera and tame these great lizards of Cloudfyre.

As the Droplets
of Charon thundered into
earyth
they had exploded, leaving craters as large as
hollowed hills. But from them climbed Charon’s so-called Imps.
Devilish creatures riddled with exotic star diseases. It were
during these days the giants waged fierce battles against the
Skinkks for control over Cloudfyre’s vast stretches of land. And it
were the giants who believed that the Skinkks, in order to wipe the
giants from existence, had somehow engineered Charon’s Imps. For,
tiny though Charon’s Imps were, their effects on giants were
devastating. Their simple presence were enough to have a giant keel
over in sickness, and prolonged exposure meant his
death.

Giants however were not all who
feared the Imps. When it came to Charon’s little devils, it seemed
the larger the creature, the greater he suffered. The giants had
thus questioned the idea that Skinkks were to blame for the
emergence of these little star devils. For Skinkks perished far
more quickly at their hand, and in far greater number; brutal,
horrible deaths, mutating into grotesque creatures before their
thumping hearts exploded through their chests.

Sitting there gazing down at
Melai’s casket, Gargaron prayed that she jested, or else he were
like to swipe the object from her grasp before another word were
spoken. ‘Melai,’ he said clearly. ‘This be a very serious claim.
Tell me it be not true.’

She gazed up into his eyes. ‘I
speak no jest. You say we need press forward, well this be a
solution.’

He swallowed. She had never seen him look so
worried.

‘
Have you not encountered them in
your travels?’ Melai asked him.

‘
I have gone out of my way to
avoid the places they are known to dwell. Do you not know the
effect they have on my kind?’

She frowned. ‘No. I know only that
these things, whatever they be, from wherever they come, keep
dragons away from Mother Thoonsk.’

Gargaron breathed out long and
heavy. Staring down at her, considering the way forward, but also
the way back if they took that path. He breathed out again. ‘Very
well.’ He gazed out toward where the Skinkk were still in slumber.
The Imps would make him sick but would certainly kill the Skinkk.
It seemed blood extraction and passage through the remaining
stretch of Varstahk might become a viable option after all. ‘Very
well,’ he said again.

‘
So, shall I proceed?’ Melai
asked.

He wiped sweat from his brow.
‘Yes, but I must remove myself. Retreat some distance.
Though…’

‘
Though what?’

‘
Should I retreat and leave you
here, then I would, by my actions, be putting you in mortal
peril.’

She shook her head. ‘That beast
will not dare stray near me whilst I wield these
things.’

He eyed her closely. ‘Are you
certain?’

‘
Yes. Now, lower me
down.’

‘
And what of these star imps? Do
they not ail your kind?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I shall
be safe. Now lower me and go. Quickly.’

He cast an eye at the great Skinkk
hoping it were indeed dead. Then he nodded. ‘Aye, then. Very well.
But I shall leave you with Grimah.’

‘
A bad idea,’ she said shortly.
‘He may suffer. Now lower me down please, before this dragon wakes
up at the sounds of our procrastination.’

Gargaron did not
like this, but knew he had little choice. Though it were
he
who wished now to
retreat and find another route. Or to ponder another option. But
Melai were wriggling impatiently from Grimah’s shoulders and so he
took Melai’s arm, and gripping her wood clump, he lowered her to
the pavers at Grimah’s feet.

‘
Release them and be quick about
it then,’ Gargaron said as he pulled Grimah about. ‘And if that
dragon be not dead as you so claim, and awaken before you are done
then, have no fear, I shall be at your side quicker than a
sunflare.’

She nodded, as if
to say,
Thank you
, and with that he wheeled his mount around and took himself
back two hundred paces, where he adjudged he ought be well beyond
the influence of the Imps. Here he brought Grimah to a halt within
the relative cover of a narrow corridor between temples, a low
arched roof protecting he and horse from any possible air attack
should this Skinkk awake unto anger.

4

Melai tread
forward as far as she dared. She halted her advance no more than
twenty paces from the sleeping dragon and placed her
monstrut hoegeth
upon
ground and whispered a short incantation. Upon her breath, a
greenish mist flowed gently from her mouth and covered the object
like spore. Nothing happened. She looked up and searched the dragon
for signs of its stirring. It remained unmoved, its eyes ever
shut.

Melai lowered her
head and closed her own eyes and again spoke the incantation that
ought to have rendered her
monstrut
hoegeth
open. Again, greenish mist drifted
from her lips, layering the casket. Several moments passed. Before
she heard a sound. But not from the casket. She looked up. The
dragon were watching her, one eye open.

5

Melai would have turned and flown…
had her wooden casket not then split open, letting out intense dark
light that erupted at first in black beams cutting into blue skies,
beams that rolled and curled like fog on a dark night. Then out
they wriggled, small beasts, black as obsidian, clambering like
rampant, mindless beetles from a bucket. Instinctively though, it
seemed they knew their purpose, for they veered directly toward the
sleeping dragon, moving like dark ghosts beyond a storm, like blots
of dye on damp papyrus, leaving wafting trails of saturated ink on
the air.

Gargaron were glad he had
retreated. Glad Melai could not see him. For instantly, though he
were some distance from the Imps, he felt his vision blur, felt his
eyes water, felt as if someone had pushed a blade through his belly
and were turning it about. His head might well have been submerged
in turbulent waters, suddenly washed back and forth, back and
forth. He lay low against Grimah’s shoulders for fear he might
tumble off, and while he grimaced and groaned he fought intense
pain and mounting confusion to keep one eye peeled in order to hold
Melai under his surveillance.

The Skinkk snapped up like a
snake, shuddering, rearing its head back, letting out a pained
howl. It tried to heft itself to its feet. But it stumbled and
roared and toppled drunkenly onto its ribs. It moved to right
itself, only to flail about, its legs jutting in the air, flailing,
while its wings lay weakly, sickly, out across the
pavers.

Gargaron were astounded at how
quickly and severely the star imps affected the Skinkk. Though the
Skinkk were likely weakened, already in the process of dying before
they’d encountered it.

Melai backed up, stepping away
from the floundering dragon. She would not turn her back on it lest
its apparent torture be some trick, lest its claws whip out and
slice her in two the moment she let it from her sight. Her
star-bugs pressed toward it, mindless, soulless, both jerky and
fluid in their movement, multiple shards of dark light shooting out
from them, jabbing the dragon’s scaly hide, puncturing it, drawing
blood.

The Skinkk managed to roll over,
its legs now pinned beneath its weight. Its wings flapped wildly,
attempting to lift its body upward, to free its legs. At last it
managed to do so, and then it were standing. In what seemed an
enormous effort, the Skinkk swung its head round, roaring, omitting
a mighty burst of molten fire across the pavers, completely
drowning the star-bugs.

Gargaron’s skin turned cold; Melai
were in its direct path. She were two sunflares away from being
engulfed by an inferno and he were utterly powerless to stop
it.

Gargaron tried to heel Grimah into
a gallop, but his weakened legs could do naught but merely nudge
his horse’s flanks. He tried yelling out, for Melai to run, for she
had not budged an inch, had made no effort to fly, or flee in any
manner. Yet his voice were raspy. And could not be heard. And as he
watched, the roaring inferno came at her… swallowing her
whole.