ALLORY DROPPED INTO A dream. Splot.
Splat into a vat she fell flat, rather startled and all that.
Eep? What’s wrong with my brain?
The instant she thought about it, a battle began. Her versus the gritty black ooze. The gloopy gunk clung to her body with disturbing facility both in the physical and magical realms, miring her lowered wings; she quickly raised those she could and reached around to try to free the lower pairs. The goo, which had a distinct odour similar to anise, sucked eagerly upon her left hand, almost trapping it before, with a low groan, she managed to jerk free.
She promptly sank another inch.
“Suggids!” she squeaked, and instantly regretted her clear, piping voice.
Freeze. Nothing harmed her.
Glancing about, Allory discovered that she had landed toward the edge of a very large metal cauldron, perhaps twelve or fourteen feet across. The dark grey rim was too tall for her to see over, but not so tall as to wholly obscure the cavern’s ceiling and surrounds. She noticed immediately that the obsidian rock was strangely wavy in appearance, as if molten rock had once been subjected to a gale-force wind, causing it to take on peaks and troughs of stone. A gentle flickering yellow glow suggested torch sconces nearby, perhaps around a corner or out of sight, and a steady soughing sound suggested wind, but she felt no hint of a breeze.
“Fetch the fresh gulaparium, you dolts!” snarled a draconic voice. Felidragon? Almost definitely. “Fill the hexes and be quick about it! Morons!”
The cauldron shook as a pair of footsteps, as best she could make out, approached. Allory sank another half-inch due to the vibration. She tried not to breathe. Sink much more and she’d be in real trouble. Well, worse trouble than her current trouble, which was admittedly pretty bad.
“This ’un, Thwokkit?”
This voice, thick and coarse to her ear, clearly belonged to a very large creature. The hand that gripped the side of the cauldron made that more than clear. Humungous. Each of three ochre-coloured fingers was as wide as she stood tall. She could have danced upon one of its filthy fingernails with room to spare.
“Glurpud, y’know the drill. Roll it out,” said another, his voice even lower in timbre.
Thwokkit must be the brother of an earthquake, she decided.
In a second, another monstrous, gnarled hand gripped the cauldron and, with twin grunts of effort, one accompanied by a booming report undoubtedly emanating from a rear end, judging by the whiff that assaulted her nostrils and a gruff, ‘Ahrrr, what a ripper!’ which accompanied it, the creatures heaved the cauldron up onto what Allory took for a low cart. Creak of wood. Low rumble as they set off.
Thwokkit rumbled, “Head down. Keep ’um going.”
“Down. Push,” muttered the other.
Allory saw his ears appear above the level of the cauldron and the dome of an ochre head, entirely bald and lightly spotted with greenish-white – well, were those mushrooms? Or moss? Hard to tell. Suggids! How enormous were these creatures?
They passed a cavern from which an eerie wailing emanated, along with sudden bursts of bubbling sounds, a clangour of background activity, and a low, droning chanting that she took for some kind of sinister magic. Nothing she had never heard before. Each syllable rattled like dice clacking together.
Nausea twisted up her stomach into a rancid nectar soup.
As they passed through a low, gloomy tunnel, she suddenly realised that the ooze was up to her chest. Not good. She had better start swimming. Three seconds of straining, however, convinced her that the sheer muscle power of her less-than-mighty frame was not about to gain her more than about an inch an hour. This stuff was vicious and viscous.
Bad joke. Use the brain, Allory Fae.
A soft, delicate hum emerged from her throat as she worked on finding a way to loosen this goop. No good. She struggled for several long minutes, until the point that the tunnel opened up and Glurpud and Thwokkit straightened up. Her tongue unwittingly produced a Very Bad Word. These had to be Trolls, surely? Probably some kind of Fungal Trolls given their odour and distinctive, fungus-covered hides – they were blotched in leaflike patches of white and green fungus and stood, even hunched over to walk on their knuckles like Farzintak Gorillas, over twenty-five feet tall at the shoulder. Walking on their stubby hind legs, their mountainous shoulders leaned to the fore and their long arms bent under the weight of their frankly enormous upper bodies. Their smell preceded them like a dry, musty slap in the nostrils.
How had she not seen them before?
The cauldron must have been located far deeper than she had imagined. Plus, they must have been crawling to fit through the tunnels.
The Fungal Trolls hauled the cauldron along with ease. Meantime, Allory vocalised and experimented, at last finding a rhythm that seemed to help, stretching the goop enough that she could start pressing her way over to the side, step by sloughing step. Every time she thought she was making progress, however, the stuff contrived to suck her back down again. A bit like smart Pixie dust. It even smelled a touch fusty, like Pixie dust which might have been laying about for a few hundred years.
What an odd sense in this cavern. Eerie echoes.
The roof drew back. Nothing lit the vaulting gloom above save for a slight blueish glow emanating from just ahead. Allory’s antennae-senses prickled. What was this place? What was hidden here? She noticed that the cart, swaying as it turned a little, approached a pyramid of onyx rock perhaps a hundred feet tall. Thwokkit reached out to steady the cauldron.
The Scintillant sank another inch. Up to her shoulders now. Dangerous territory – suggids! What could she do?
“It’s not here?” Glurpud rumbled.
“Naw,” grunted Thwokkit. “I fear it in my belly, I do.”
“Aye. Them mists bother my –”
“Brain?” sneered the Felidragon voice. “Your alleged brain? You rock-grubbing fool, fill the hexes! Here I am, top of my class seventeen years running and what am I doing for work? Oh, checking the focussing mirrors. Right. I hate my life. I’d rather be sucking on a roasted bara-rat. The food in this charnel house! Revolting swill, barely fit for a Troll’s consumption, never mind a creature of my refined tastes. Hurry up! Aye, the Master’s not here so no need to soil your loincloths. Suggid-sucking filth! Jaw-champing morons!”
The snooty Felidragon stomped off to carry out his favourite job. Chuckle.
That left Allory to crane her neck as they rounded the peak, and her jaw dropped. A helpless squeak of dismay strangled in her throat, barely louder than a branch mouse.
Scintillants!
As the Felidragon chuntered away somewhere about mirrors and adjustments, she stared up over the metal rim and was nearly squashed as a vast metal ladle dipped into her goop, brushing her wings on the way past. Another ladle dipped in at the far side and the Trolls began their labour. Filling the hexes. Each clear hexagonal tank held a single Scintillant. Each was about a foot in diameter. These hexes stood stacked in close rows upon multiple staggered ledges that rose all the way up the stone pyramid – most likely an artificial construction – reaching the pinnacle of a single hex at the top, which was the only one she saw that appeared to be empty. Her aghast gaze took in the length and breadth of the pyramid.
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Hundreds of her people. Thousands.
More Scintillants than she had ever seen in her life.
She could not even see the whole thing. Too low in the cauldron. Still sinking, yet her heart sank further and faster. Her eyes leaped from side to side. Each container rested partially upon the one below it, connecting them, but the containers were also connected by strange, silver-azure wires that thrummed with arcane power. The Scintillants were each encased in a delicate silver net that appeared to entrap their arms, legs and wings; they floated suspended in a solution that was clear, unlike the gunk these Trolls were spooning into the hexes with surprising deftness. Aye. In most cases, the solution bathing the Scintillants was below the halfway level of their containers, meaning that they could just touch their outstretched toes to the bottom. Silver wires affixed to the corners of the hexagons held the Faerie in what she could only conclude was helpless captivity.
Allory ground her fist against her mouth to stifle a sob. Poor Scintillants! They looked … drained. Literally and figuratively drained.
Could this be some monstrous magic extraction device?
It had to be. Allory already sensed her enervation and it was hardly as if she had done much. Nor was her experience of Scintillant magic the on-command, flow-like-sap sort. Even in a dream or vision or whatever this was, that truth could not be ignored.
Could one be aware of a dream inside a dream?
Glub, glub, glub went the ladles. Shloop, shloop went the gloop as it poured into the hexes. The Trolls did not glance into the cauldron as they spooned up portions that, were they nectar, could have fed dozens of Faerie at a time. Huge as it was, the level of liquid in the cauldron had already dropped noticeably. So many hexes to fill. Could the Wraith be concentrating the power of scintillance in this way? Could this stuff be nutritious? Allory made to taste some before pausing. It could also be drugged.
Far too much of that around her cocoon!
Now she had the chills, and the shaking made her sink right up to her chin.
She’d drown! A long, thin scream inadvertently issued from her throat. Seeing the next ladle incoming in the corner of her eye, Allory pray-wish-begged for it to scoop … just so … and with a heavy scrape to her left thigh and a dragging sensation that threatened to pull her legs off, she rose with the ladle – ah indeed, Princess, there is a fly in your soup, her brain blathered unexpectedly – and swung into the air with her legs dangling over the side as she folded over the edge of the ladle like a sloppy wet dishrag.
Backside on display, ever so elegant.
Head under the surface! No air! Allory could not even scream as she tried somehow to thrust with her hands to push her head back up, but the metal was slippery and the goop, too strong. Her arms could not even flail, except in ultra-slow motion. Instinct kept her mouth firmly shut.
Suddenly, the surface digging into her belly tipped. Allory slop-slithered into a hex, managing to snatch a precious half-breath on the way. Immediately, a vile tingling jangled her limbs. She found herself floating next to an unconscious Scintillant. Breathing? She waited, waited for any tiny movement …
No. He was dead.
Horror upon horror crammed beneath her breastbone.
“Why is it swimming?”
The deep voice above her preceded a massively thick thumb-and-forefinger grip clamping her wings together. The muscle bundles screamed unbearably as he pulled. Allory distinctly felt something tear behind her left shoulder but almost in the same instant, she popped free and her natural scintillance flared, catching her and Thwokkit equally by surprise. The Troll sneezed violently as he recoiled, waking up hundreds of Scintillants. The blast smacked her up against his curled fingers, serving the dual purpose of blowing her free of the goop only to be covered with – suggids – more goop.
Ah, that would be yellow-green Troll snot, to be precise. Delightful. The blob was large enough to drown five of her, but as a saving grace it was slimy enough to swim free of in a second. Allory emerged from her epic snot bathing experience to hear the Felidragon screech:
“Have a care with the equipment, you purrr-blind, thumping brute!”
“Pretty,” Glurpud rumbled.
“Bright shiny she,” Thwokkit agreed.
“Get on with it!” the furry one yowled. “You’ve work to do!”
Allory fully expected to be dumped in a hexagon or squashed like a bug. Instead, Twokkit peered at her with a slow blink of his wide-set, lucid yellow eyes. She stared back, stunned by the intelligence she read there. Fungal Trolls were meant to be mindless brutes. Savage servants of the enemy. Nothing like this. She had assumed mental deficiency from their slow speech.
Oh, Allory!
“She-Fae cleared Thwokkit mind,” the Troll rumbled in tones she realised were not meant to carry intelligibly to the Felidragon. He winked once at her, again very slowly.
Why did she keep underestimating every creature she met?
The ladle continued its work as if his right arm worked independently from his left, or his brain could fill hexes and converse with her simultaneously, with perfect ease. Allory was not sure she could have done that. Not a drop spilled.
Pushing free of this new gloop trap, she bowed shakily. “Thank you, Thwokkit. I’m deeply grateful.”
She had cleared his mind? Helped somehow?
“Is good-um nice,” he rumbled.
Suddenly, Allory became aware of sharper stares emerging from the tanks she had somehow touched – no, she must have infected their black goop somehow! As the ladles worked their way along the ninth row up, she realised that the freshly-dosed Scintillants appeared markedly more active than those higher up.
Suggids, what have I done now?
Another Allory special mishap! Perfect timing!
Suddenly, her antennae prickled and she turned upon the Troll’s palm, seeking the source of – there. That Scintillant, the sapphire manfae with feathery antennae, was he slightly different to her? The manfae gestured with a slight toss of his head.
“Go, little pretty,” Thwokkit murmured. “Prophecy it must do.”
Right. Definitely, she had landed in a dream. Because, despite those strangely frayed antennae, that Scintillant bore a definite resemblance to her. The chin, the nose, the distinctive swirly wing patterning … and he shone. Scintillance swelled before her amazed eyes as they made not only eye contact, but soul-contact.
Allory winged over not knowing how she even flew. That numb.
Smiling at her as if he were party to some great secret she did not, the manfae said, “Welcome. Did you bring it?”
“Bring …”
His eyes rested not upon her torso – blush – but a little above, at the base of her neck. Allory touched the spot before she could arrest the movement, peripherally aware that Thwokkit reached out with his long arms rather than moving his body to keep filling the tanks. A Troll shield! Nothing hung at her neck. Where could the ariayaenvul be?
Tiny headshake.
“But you know what I mean?” he asked.
“Who are you?” Allory coloured even more at her astounded whisper. “I – sorry. Suggids. Aye, I know of what you speak. Why –”
“I am Jynnari Fae, Philosopher and Seer, and I See in you one who travels the pathways of true Scintillance. You will understand one day – to explain, I believe you are my descendent of many generations in what some call the future, but to the Scintillant Traveller, is but a glimmer apart from the true source of all light.”
Allory shook her head in consternation. “Eep … I …”
“Then, all is as it should be,” he smiled. Inscrutable had nothing on his expression.
She did not appreciate fate whamming her about the pointy ear with a hint approximately the size of an angry Hyperdragon travelling at supersonic speed, but there it was. One Allory would simply have to accept it.
“Can I … rescue you?” she spluttered. “Help you? Do … something?”
“Indeed, you can and you will. I have Seen –” his eyes glazed over with pure azure blue radiance, making her nearly leap out of her wings, before he said in a strange monotone “– Allory Fae, seek thee Annioli Fae wherever and whenever she might exist and convince her to create that of what we speak. You must not fail!” Returning abruptly to his normal voice, he said, “Allory? What a pretty name you have, dearest sap-of-my-sap. Would you be so kind as to imbue me with your scintillance? I believe that a Scintillant rebellion is about to be born.”
“Eep?”
Really? That was all she could say?
Jynnari nodded encouragingly. “I assure you, the spark of your inimitable scintillance is the greatest gift you could bestow upon our people at this time.”
Again, that odd emphasis on this time.
She might be hovering in the air just above his hex, but Allory felt as if all Spheris must surely be tumbling about her. This was crazy! Far too crazy to deny.
She heard herself say in a self-assured tone, “Jynnari Fae, my soul grieves for all our people have suffered. Be not dismayed. I shall be honoured beyond words to share this gift with you.” Leaning forward, she kissed him lightly between the antennae and sang in the softest voice, “May my service ignite your immortal soul, o Jynnari Fae.”
An azure-white spark stung her lips as it leaped across to him.
Allory gasped, seeing reflected momentarily in his eyes, her whole being alight with wonder. She shone!
Then, light detonated from Jynnari’s body. Quick as a flash, it lit up the liquid in his hexagon and vaporised it. The wires and wire netting entrapping his body flared brilliant white and disintegrated. Before she could even think to blink, the transformation rippled up and down and across all the hexagonal tanks. The Scintillants rose from their tanks, cheering and flicking their wings and crying out with delight.
“Mrrr-GNARR!! What are you doing?” roared the Felidragon.
He was a Golden Purrmaine! Traitor!
“Time for a rebellion!” Jynnari roared at an infeasible volume for a sixteen-inch Scintillant. “Smash the tanks, my people! Wreck the elemental mirrors! Leave nothing of the Wraith’s foul apparatus untouched.”
“No! NEVERRR!!”
The Felidragon shot over in a blur of wings, orange fire gathering in his agape maw.
In a blur of motion, Glurpud swatted him out of the air as a Faerie would swat a mosquito. The Felidragon hurtled across the cavern and smashed against the far wall, clearly in no shape to rise soon. Somewhere, an alarm – a Dragon, actually – thundered a warning. As the great Troll gaped at his hand as if it had somehow betrayed him, Thwokkit threw back his head and gave a mighty bellow of belly-laughter. With a belly of his size, his guffaws shook the entire cavern.
When he had finished deafening everyone, his head lowered. He gazed at Allory and rumbled, “You go, pretty Faerie. Go make it dance and light. All light.”
“Thanks – eep!”
Unexpectedly, a glint in his eye reeled her in like a fish hooked by a fast line. Allory shot into the light, into infinity.