FOR AN ENDLESS MOMENT, Allory did not recognise that the wild scream had not torn from her own little lungs.
The Ripper Baboons froze. Missing her target by a laughable margin, the Scintillant sprawled headlong in the peaty, organic muck. Go! Scuttling away between a pair of bandy legs on her hands and knees, she staggered to her feet and slogged diagonally across the mucky slope – frenzied of effort but rather less than effective at finding a way to freedom. Meantime, the pile shuddered beneath an infeasibly heavy impact.
GRRRRAARRGHH – WHOMP!
The chaos behind her was a bone-chilling eruption of pure animalistic fury. It seemed to lift her into the air and dump her on her face in one fell swoop. Allory stayed where she had fallen, each shallow breath rasping in her throat, her eyes glued shut in terror. Odd thoughts swirled inside her brain, as sluggish as an evening flight of fat essormis moths.
Maybe this is the afterlife?
Maybe Middlesun has crashed into the sphere of the world after all?
She had to be dead. No. Not yet. Mildly surprised not to feel the crunch of powerful fangs shattering her frail bones, she tremulously unwound her arms from their protective clasp over her head and face and peeked back at the fray.
What the … yuck!
She scraped brown slime out of her eye, blinked hard and peered again.
A … a something … was fighting the Ripper Baboons. All of them. At once. The monster was a blur of golden fur, with paws longer than she stood tall tipped with great talons that sprayed fresh crimson with every savage swipe, flaring golden wings and a battle cry that turned her bones to water:
SSKKKRREEE-SSSS!!
What was that?
Powerful as this new foe was, the sheer numbers of Ripper Baboons swarming over the beast were enough to pin it down in a heaving frenzy of bodies, to claw furrows into its great bulk from which ichor-like black fluid oozed and to raise from the roaring beast a note that she recognised as pain.
Did it fight for her life? For its own?
Weapon! She needed a weapon, her dagger … there! It lay four feet closer to the fight. The mayhem shook her from her antennae to her bare toes, roaring and snarling, sharp barks and screeches of mortal pain. Sidling forward against her better instincts, Allory secured the insignificant weapon. She shook so hard she had to use both hands to grip the haft.
Sapphire knuckles turned white. Now what?
No baboon noticed her move. Regular dull thuds arose from the pile as one Ripper repeatedly smashed the creature over the skull with a short piece of log. It shattered. Her feet echoed the terror in her heart by taking her backward two steps. Three. With a thunderous growl that turned her bones to sap, brilliant white fire spurted from somewhere within the pile, tearing the Ripper Baboons apart as if by magic. Two, burning like torches, leaped desperately into the water with huge splashes while the rest of the combatants imploded again, clearly trying to subdue the golden beast by sheer force of numbers and weight.
Allory blinked as her treacherous feet turned the retreat into a rout.
Fire?
What creature under Middlesun produced actual fire?
She bit her lip. Only the legendary Dragons, her peoples’ histories told. That could not be a Dragon. It was furry. Almost … feline? Realisation struck twice over: first, that this creature was an impossibility and secondly, it had saved her life. Another impossibility. No doubt clouded her mind. She had been on the run for days. Wrecked, hurting in every drop of her sap, done. Nightmares followed by waking visions of murder and destruction; haunted by death and hunted beyond exhaustion. Yet Allory knew this thing was real. Real and lethal on a scale beyond her imagination.
Why was she not pelting off as fast as her legs could carry her?
The Ripper Baboons swarmed over the larger predator like a team of army ants, fighting to wind a vine about the fiery creature’s long neck – that one! There. He was the alpha male, the ochre scarification marks upon his chest and cheeks proclaiming his status. He was the one whose bulging, hairy arms gripped the vine with prodigious strength now, slowly throttling this creature which had tried to save her. Even though the fire-breather was four or five times bigger than any of the Rippers and despite its heaving, bucking and wild struggles, the Baboons clung on like grim death, stifling its movements.
Too late?
Before her brain quite registered the idiocy of what she planned, Allory drew back her arm and hurled the dagger – her only weapon, she remembered belatedly as the handle brushed away from her fingertips – overhand at that big male Ripper. Winking with azure-silver sparks of magic as it spun end over end, the blade handle suddenly sprouted from the male baboon’s right eye like an improbable chunk of fungus.
He dropped without a sound.
What? She had hit her target from fifteen feet amidst a chaotic battle? Er … what form of magic would that be? Dancing skyfires!
The other Rippers recoiled with guttural gasps of fear. To them, the strike must have been practically invisible, a curse from the fabled blue.
Beneath the pile, the golden monster came alive in a formless blur of movement, sensing its chance. Fire and fur and fury! A roar that reverberated like Death’s own advent! Even though the furry thing moved jerkily, as if badly wounded, it sprayed fire in all directions and fought back in a staggering paroxysm of rage. Perhaps it realised how close it had come to death. Perhaps fear spurred it on. Whatever the case, the Ripper Baboon pack screamed as a stream of golden-orange fire hosed over them, first splashing their bodies before somehow sucking into their fur. Like flame igniting dry leaves, the Rippers exploded into balls of fire. Suddenly, they broke and bolted in every direction, screaming in agony and fear and collapsing in smoking heaps.
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Allory’s nostrils flared at the scent of burning flesh, sickly sweet. Gross!
Retch! Gag … she could not tear her gaze away from the spectacle. Before her aghast eyes, the golden one disembowelled two fleeing Rippers. It pounced lithely, fluid as mercury and quick as lightning, to tackle another headed straight toward her. One paw flashed forward, scragging the hapless creature by the neck as if it weighed no more than a butterfly. The horrific, carnivorous maw gaped; the long fangs carved its victim’s flesh with horrific ease, as if slicing effortlessly through water. It shook the Baboon like a santogerbil and tossed it aside with a disdainful flick of its lithe, muscular neck.
Spinning about, the creature found a wounded Ripper struggling nearby and slit its throat neatly, ending its misery. It voiced a strange, satisfied purr – did such an act pass for mercy in this vicious predator’s view? The survivors scarpered.
In a moment, the frantic rustling of leaves stopped. The sounds of whimpering retreat faded.
All was still.
After surveying the exodus with an expression of the uttermost disdain, a pair of tapering oval eyes that seethed with real inner fire, in swirls of white, orange and gold flame, shifted to fix upon her. The long whiskers tilted quizzically.
Allory stared back, fascinated and terrified in equal measure. Hypnotised!
Cat. Winged beast. Fire-breather. Killer. Meaningless words swirled about in her fevered mind as she sweated beneath the awfully alien yet intelligent scrutiny of this creature. It must know it had been injured, nigh killed, because she had led a posse of Ripper Baboons straight to its lair.
She wanted to apologise. Stammering words must surely come, yet her throat rebelled. Any second now, it would end her miserable existence in a small spray of silver Fae blood …
It shifted. Her eyes flew wide. Suggids, no!
As the creature paced sinuously toward her, a dazzling array of pure white fangs gleaming between its furry lips, Allory did what any sensible Faerie would have done – after all, insensible death was far preferable to conscious experience of the final, crushing bite.
She let her knees buckle in a dead faint.
* * * *
The world changed, but not as Allory expected.
As she had fled the ruin of her colony and the images of death that played behind her eyelids waking or sleeping, other images had begun to intrude upon her consciousness. Images not born of her own memory. Shattered fragments lurked amidst night’s shadows. Weapons and faces and beasts unknown to her except from legend and lore. A faraway drumbeat of feet. A clinking and roaring as men laboured amongst flame, melting down metal ores and striking ruddy bars with iron hammers wider than her wingspan. Hints of sulphurous smells; fangs flashing in the corners of her vision. Predatory memories seeking a mind to ravage, a psyche to devour, a soul to capture.
Yet she had known none of that was real.
Those memories were not the reality of now. Ghostly images creeping through bough and leaf she could handle as she had always been taught – thrust them aside, elide, evade, disremember.
Anything to keep the peace of her cocoon.
This was different.
Allory bit into the silken knot of a gag her own Dadfae had thrust into her mouth and tied behind her head, tight enough to hurt. Anything to muffle her nightly screaming. Her hands were free, but she knew better than to loosen the fabric.
“Wrest the truth out of her, or I’ll silence the runt myself,” her Dadfae snarled thickly. What was wrong with his voice? “You’re responsible, Xertiona. She trusts you.”
“Jahruzan, she’s only nine –”
“Silence, wifae! You’ll do something about that festering waste of Fae life or I will, I’m warning you.”
The threat shook her cocoon more severely than his tramping feet.
Ghastly silence yawned about her.
Cloth rustled. Her Momfae, Zhilmory, judging by the sweet tarhi-essence scent of her nightclothes. She whispered, “Xertiona, I can’t … I just can’t anymore …”
“I’ll question her myself. You – leave us. Go to your other Faelings.”
Curt dismissal.
In a moment, the tiny Faeling called Allory sat alone with Xertiona, the elderly Fae Philosopher who served their colony with her deep wisdom and penetrating insight. Moving over, the woman picked up the Faeling with ease. At seven and a half inches tall, Allory stood three inches shorter and was far slighter than any of her pupae-siblings. Xertiona drew her onto her lap. Strong arms cradled her body. Compressed her head against the Faesilk-robed torso. The woman rocked back and forth in a motion that although familiar, failed to comfort the youngling.
Too forced. Too abrupt.
A low muttering played against her hearing.
“Something stronger. I’ll have to search my scrolls for something stronger for you, my little blossom, or that Jahruzan, no telling what he’ll do. Dark ways, that Dadfae of yours. Quicksilver sap.” Allory sensed the woman’s hand moving in a warding gesture. “Now, little blossom, tell me everything.”
Allory shuddered.
Dry fingertips scratched the Faeling’s antennae. “You will tell me everything. O visions of the night, arise!”
Noooooo …
Her scream never found voice, for the darkness swallowed it whole. Darkness that consumed all sound, all light, all hope, all dreams.
This darkness moved unhindered through Middlesun’s brightest beam blazing down from a circular, multicoloured glass window set high overhead in a domed chamber, its segments chiselled and painted to resemble what she took to be waves in a pond in which Naiads sported, its struts of beaten gold leaf like serpent skin. Vaguely Fae-shaped but formed on a giant scale, the entity of darkness yielded no detail to the viewer. It was not a shadow, for it took without giving anything back – neither texture nor structure nor reflection, no relief for the eye whatsoever.
A massive crimson beast of scale and fire bowed before the aberration, its posture abject and its muzzle averted. Despite its gargantuan proportions, the beast shook visibly as it hissed, “All shall be done as you wish, Master.”
“Make sure it is.” The voice rustled like dry leaves, soft as a whisper, yet it filled the chamber with a sibilance like Death’s own voice. “Bring me the skyfires, Dastaradon.”
The beast cowered lower. “Master!”
Allory of the present observed this encounter with the oddest sense of dislocation. I’m a Faeling who remembers something I’ve never seen, yet I behold it now, years later? How is this possible?
As the monstrous crimson beast, all spikes, planes of amour as sharp as shards of glass and lethal, four-foot talons began to slink away, another whisper stopped it in its tracks. “Do not disappoint me, Dastaradon. It would be most … unwise. Crawl out. On your belly.”
With a heavy, leathery scraping of armoured scales upon stone, the cowed beast dragged itself out, scraping its belly scales upon the unforgiving stone.
Not difficult to infer its relief at staying alive.
A strange rasping sound emerged from the shadow, as if its throat were being throttled by invisible paws. The way the darkness undulated it appeared to inhale, but instead of the air moving, all light inside the chamber began to stream into it, quickly generating an unnatural, chilling twilight.
Allory imagined a gluttonous, unseen mouth sucking at the light. How strange. Even that beam entering the circular window bent visibly and vanished into its being.
“So, the conundrum of Scintillance endures,” this entity of darkness mused to itself, drifting sideways with an unnatural rippling motion that continued to guzzle the light, that drew shadows into its ambit even as it shifted. “Why has the ability been eroded by time, a gift become myth? What is its connection with the skyfires, with the delicious life-scents of this fey realm? Such a mighty source, yet somehow, even after all this time, it remains inaccessible. Even now, I sense in my deepest aether that there is a key – and you, Allory Fae –”
She screamed in panic as the creature shifted, a sapphire Scintillant face smearing out of its torso toward her. Another piercing, demented shriek resounded in a suddenly smaller, more organic space as the miasma of its presence brushed her soul and the creature hissed:
“You must remember!”