DRIPPING WATER ECHOED THROUGH an endlessly dark chamber. Plink. Every few seconds, plink. For the longest time, that was all she knew, the incessant sound and a dank, mineral-rich tang in the cool, humid air. A minuscule glow arose from a patch of bioluminescent moss several tens of feet away, leading the watcher to believe that this must be a low-roofed cavern somewhere deep beneath the earth, for no other light penetrated the space. That glimmer was enough for her to make out that the roof was jagged in places and the floor showed several clumps of black oval rocks.
One minor oddity, the rocks moved every so often. Just a quiver. The rocking motion was limited but discernible, conducted through the floor to her knees.
She knelt? Aye, somewhere near the back of the chamber. Her covert bearing suggested a tiny Fae sneak-thief at work. A thrill of guilt caused her wings to vibrate fitfully. Even those were dark. No hint of scintillance whatsoever.
Who was this Allory who lurked confidently in alien caves?
When was this?
At least this dream-vision was not trying to kill her. Not yet. The grotto felt strangely serene.
An unknowable time of lurking later, Allory heard shuffling footsteps echoing along a tunnel. The scraping noise approached together with a sallow glow that bobbed about as the creature moved along, in no apparent hurry. It nattered constantly beneath its breath, but although the language sounded as if it ought to be of Fae origin, she understood not a word.
The yellow light played across the top of the smooth boulders on the cavern floor, many more in number than she had imagined, and shone off many pretty mineral formations hanging from the ceiling.
Subterranean beauty.
Suddenly, the yellow light speared across the chamber. She shrank back into hiding, noticing how her limbs had been blackened – nay, she wore a close-fitting outfit of black Faesilk. Allory the saboteur? Sleek black gloves covered her hands. She touched her face, startled to find a hood with holes cut out for the eyes, nose and mouth.
Peering between several serrated peaks of stone, she watched an ill-favoured male Fae enter the chamber. He wore nothing but filthy rags; her gut clenched as she realised that his wing-clusters dragged lifelessly upon his back. In the lamplight, his skin was paler than any she had ever seen, crisscrossed by red weals that she took initially for scars, but realised belatedly must be some kind of body patterning. How peculiar! A secondary realisation jolted her as she realised that the creature must stand at least four feet tall. Was he even Fae? The muzzle rather than mouth suggested he might be some kind of malformed or even mutant breed, but he was not any sort of creature she knew or had ever heard tales about.
Setting the small brass lamp upon a stone near the entrance, the Fae peered short-sightedly across the cavern and spoke the first word she understood, “Raptors,” followed by another volley of indecipherable speech.
Raptors? One sip of nectar plus another, makes –
Eggs! Without warning, the shape of the stones on the cavern floor made sense. They were not stones at all. They were oval eggs lying upon their sides, obsidian in colour and probably as hard as stone. Hundreds of Raptor eggs! Her eyes scanned the area as the big creature pottered about, touching several eggs and muttering to himself. She spied a shallow crack leading to another cavern right beside this one. Make that thousands of eggs.
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Someone was storing up an immense army of Raptors. What little she knew about such creatures was that they were similar to Dragons and their equals intelligence, but bigger and even more vicious. Who could imagine the quantity of meat it would take to feed such numbers?
Krack!
Her eyes jumped as a sharp report echoed across the cavern. The big Fae had hit an egg with a hammer! What? Was he crazy?
He swung again, a wink of silver emanating from the delicate-seeming hammer. Krack!
Was it magical?
In an ominous ripple of sound, the eggs began to come alive. They shook. Snarls and growls emanated from within black stone shells. Not a pleasant chorus. The calls, although muffled, struck her as harsh, grating and hungry.
Dancing his way further into the chamber, the strange manfae gave a manic gurgle of laughter as he whacked away at several more eggs. Krack-krack-krack!
Allory’s breath snagged in her throat. Oh, suggids …
Here it came. The next sharp shell-crack was both louder and hollower. A wet, glistening black body shouldered several large shards of eggshell aside as it emerged, mewling and snapping angrily. Unfurled, it was far bigger than she had imagined, already seven to eight feet long and many times a Faerie’s bodyweight. Another broke free. Another – and still the manfae danced in his odd, shambling gait, belting eggs left and right as if he were a Fae gourd-drummer intent upon producing the perfect drumbeat.
Horror crept like invisible spiders’ legs treading up her neck as the Raptor hatchlings continued to spring out of their shells – some struggling, but most riled enough to snap them apart with a single flexion of their powerful bodies. As the individuals formed groups, fractious scrapping and snapping began in several places around the cavern.
The egg-cracking accelerated.
Then, what she had feared most, began. One of the hatchlings sniffed at the manfae’s passing legs. Its tongue flicked out and a new sound emerged from its throat, starting with a descending rippling trill and ending in a surprisingly deep-throated growl. As if triggered by that change of sound, every last muzzle in the cavern oriented upon him. The hatchlings scented the air. A thousand fangs gleamed in maws that cracked open to allow their tongues to taste the air’s tangs.
With a roar, the Raptors surged for their prey – and he blurred into motion!
Allory blinked in shock. A tiny sound escaped her throat, “Eep …”
The manfae veered at once, somehow darting between the snapping maws like quicksilver, untouched and untouchable, and sprinted toward her. As he came on, his torso bulged obscenely, taking on a grotesque simulacrum of her Dadfae’s features.
Jahruzan roared, “Attack the Scintillant! She knows, she must remember!”
“Eep!” she screeched.
Perfect way to give it all away.
The roars of a thousand Raptor hatchlings resounded in the cavern as the pack flung itself upon her in a whirlwind of clacking fangs and animalistic snarling. Allory flung herself flat beneath a boulder. Scything jaws chased her out of that space and into the path of a cunningly hooked paw, but with strength she did not know she possessed, she spun aside, rebounded off a stone wall and shot over what from her perspective resembled a snapping pit of jaws. Panting, dodging, beating her wing-clusters for maximum acceleration, she hurtled toward the secondary cavern.
The flat of a hand rose from nowhere to smash her off her flight path. Allory struck a rock and fell limply to the ground, somehow paralysed and unable to move as a foot raised itself slowly above her.
She looked up and gasped, “Dad … Dadfae?”
The mis-embodied face sneered, “If you won’t remember, Allory Fae –”
Like a Faesilk rope stretched to breaking point, the moment thrummed with menace. Allory had no reply. The face in that torso threw her yet again. Was this eerie experience even real? A sliver of the past or a glimpse through the veil of the future?
“– then I’ll end you, runt!”
The foot smashed down upon her left temple.