Cloudfyre falling a da.., p.1
Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale, page 1
CLOUDFYRE FALLING A.L.BROOKS
CLOUDFYRE FALLING
~ a dark fairy tale ~
Copyright © 2015 A.L.BROOKS
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______________________________________________________
For Tom and Sharon
Thanks for your patience
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COMING SOON
BY A.L.BROOKS:
STRANGEWORLD
THE MORTIFERA
A Cornish village. A mysterious doorway. A monster hell bent on killing all it encounters.
Jake and Emily find themselves at the heart of an ancient mystery.
Can they find a way to defeat the Charon and shut the doorway before it’s too late?
OUT NOW:
THE SHAPESHIFTERS
Arrabel Grean goes on the run from the Royal Lancers after she beheads the Hampton Baroness.
But having fled to the Dread Forests she is found by the Bonekeepers.
Will they hand her over to authorities? Or do they have something else in mind for her?
CLOUDFYRE FALLING
~ a dark fairytale ~
CONTENTS
GREAT FALL 5472 6
THE BEGINNING 14
ENDWORLD 25
DRENVEL’S BANE 34
CHANDRY’S STEPPE 45
GRIMAH 56
AUTUMN 72
SKYSIGHT 83
THE GOAT’S HEAD 101
UJIK-L78 111
FLIGHT OF THE PORNIGRAFICA 121
MELAI OF THOONSK 130
THE ABOMINATION 148
THE RJOOND 162
MOONSTONE 178
IHETHA 189
CLARAVILLE 194
THE WITCH 203
REVELATIONS 220
VARSTAHK 237
SKINKK 246
HAITHARATH AND THE IMPREGNATOR 266
DARK SKIES 284
KING’S LAIR 295
BLUD OF WRENBUGGUS 306
THE MENACE AT APPLEFORD 325
NORTHLANDS RAIL 353
PUKAYA’S BRIDGE 366
TALES OF CHIANAY 385
SHADOW GUARD 397
SANCTUARY 404
THE SWARM 420
THE WARDENS THREE 434
FLIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRDS 446
TREK TO DARK WOOD 458
VANTASIA 468
CAHSSI OF THE XOORD 473
RECORD OF GHARTST 485
SLÜV THE VANISHER 494
RITH GARTHA 499
SEA SCAR 509
GESHA AND OOSHA 524
BY THE CAT’S EYES 529
THROUGH THE GATES 537
VOL MOTHAAK 549
THE EMPTY TOWER 556
RISE OF HOR 568
DARK ONE 587
EARTHCHILD 599
HOORSK 613
DAWN OF REETH 613
DUMIINS 614
GREAT FALL 5473 614
Want More Monsters? 615
VESHK
GREAT FALL 5472
1
GARGARON STONEHEART reached the end of the world with the corpses of his wife and daughter upon his shoulders. For a moment he stood near the edge of the Great Precipice, catching his breath, surveying the endless drop down into the hazy blue lands far, far below.
As a boy he had stood in this very spot. And then, like now, he wondered what lay down there. Some of the more learned folk from his village had said that it were filled with ancient forests of the First Days that stretched back’n’more through time to the very birth of the universe. Others claimed the ancient cities of Men lay there. Deserted and silent.
Whatever it were, his kind, the Giants of Hovel, knew that mysterious land simply as Endworld.
He had been here to the Precipice only twice before in all his days. Once as a young lad to watch his dear father see off his grandwuns. He had relished that particular occasion, treating the journey as some grand boyhood adventure, too young to appreciate the purpose of their trip. (Although, having seen his father cry, he had reflected deeply on this matter during their homeward journey.) Second time he had been far more introspective. For, that second time had been to farewell his own mother and father, to send off their lifeless forms and watch them hefted away down into Endworld’s mysterious lands.
His third and final time should have been his own send off, his children carrying out the ancient ceremony of summoning Vurah’s Wraiths and dousing he and his wife in liquid Helfire.
He drew in a deep breath and tenderly hoisted the corpses of his beloved from his shoulders. Gently he lay them down amidst waving tussocks of feather grass. Now he sat. Wiping sweat from his brow. He pulled his legs to his chest and rest his chin upon his knees. And with sad eyes, he watched Veleyal, his dear, dear daughter… Never again would she breathe the sweet air of Cloudfyre. Never again would Gargaron’s world rejoice in her delicate laughter. Never again would she come to him, holding out her small arms wide to grasp his leg, to embrace him, to tell him she loved him, to kiss his face with her tiny lips, to feel safe in his presence. If it were at all possible, his heart sank deeper at these musings. He wiped a tear from his eye, surprised he still had any to shed.
Now he gazed upon Yarniya, his wife. There she lay, her body void of life. Something that still perplexed him. For, when bonded by marriage, giants by vow are also bonded in death; should a spouse pass on, so then do their partner. But here he, Gargaron, sat alive and breathing while she lay perished. Somehow he could not help thinking that somewhere, some god or goddess were playing upon him a cruel trick.
2
It were late afternoon when he studied the position of Gohor and Melus, Cloudfyre’s two suns. Melus, the more prominent of the two, glowed proud and strong and yellow and hot. Gohor, blue as ice, always the more distant of the two, seemed so much closer nowadays. The Oldwuns used to say days would end when Cloudfyre’s suns strayed too close and crashed into each other. But all Oldwuns were long gone so what did they know.
Bugs chirruped and hummed in woody scrub. Gargaron found these sounds a comfort. Sounds of living things when he had encountered so much death and dying on his journey here. Occasionally a sluggish, meandering jhünd ant would crawl across his ankle; in days passed he would have swiped life from such an insect pest before it bit into him and buried its head into his skin and spat out its parasitic larvae. But it seemed oddly disinterested in him. And he felt the earyth had been tainted with enough death in recent days. Thus he let it be and he sat and watched it be on its way.
A second jhünd ant he lifted from his knuckles and placed carefully in the dirt beneath a thorn bush. As he sat there watching it, he witnessed it turning around and around and around, as if some invisible cackling demon had it in invisible reins determined to run the creature to death through exhaustion and madness.
Gargaron busied himself, gathering kindling. Then larger chunks of wood. He built a small pyramid of sticks then grabbed some dried tufts of feathergrass and stuffed these inside the bundle’s hollow. He took his vial of Helfire, unstoppered it, and poured a small steaming dollop onto a patch of the soft dried grass. The purplish liquid smoked for a time, before a tiny blue flame licked into life, curling up through the feathergrass like a small snakeling. It sprouted multiple heads and then, whump, the feathergrass ignited as one, sending high red flames about the taller sticks.
An impressive fire were soon crackling and spitting and Gargaron laid thicker knobs of twisted roastwood on top. The roastwood gave off a sweet, musky aroma, a wonderful smell taking him back to younger simpler days when, as a boy, he and his father would take provisions into the Forests of Chayosa and, by nights, sleep beside a warming roastwood camp fire and his father would teach him about the dust of the cosmos, the stars, moons, gods and goddesses of Great Nothing; would teach him secrets of the forest, how to conjure honeywater from the Vell Flowers of Gargantua in a summer’s drought, how to stalk and hunt invisible ghost-wren for their sweet, succulent meat, and for their blood, believed to possess properties that could cause pleasant inebriation and warm the veins of your heart on a cold winter’s night.
As Gohor and Melus sunk toward the distant horizon, as light began to fade from Cloudfyre, Gargaron allowed again his eyes to stray toward his wife and daughter. They lay covered in meadow moss. Its tiny leaves transparent. He could see her face, that of his dear daughter Veleyal, her eyes shut. Five moon-stars old, now destined never to grow any older. She could have been merely in slumber and nothing more. And Yarniya, his beloved, cherished wife… She too looked as if nothing more than sweet, sweet sleep had come over her.
A faint smile found its way to his face. Fond memories tickling him. Of tucking his dear girls into bed at night as giant moor hens howled up from the plains, calling on Vasher, Gorvhald, Veeo, Canooc, Leenurs, Noo Ka, and Syssa, the seven moons of Cloudfyre.
He gazed up into vast dusky skies and saw Noo Ka, her pale blue pockmarked skin, beginning to glow through darkening heavens. Low on northern horizons Syssa were rising, pale as daisies, and cratered. And above her hovered Gorvhald, its dark “eyes” watching night descend upon Cloudfyre. Others would peek out and show their faces b efore morning.
Fireflies began to flash intermittently. Teasing another memory from him. He had sat with Veleyal, his daughter, one night sometime around her first moon-star, on the steps to their cottage in Hovel. At dusk, fireflies floated out from Summer Woods. And danced their wonderful fairy dance before Veleyal’s sparkling eyes. She had reached out her tiny hand and gargled as they lit upon her fingers and twinkled blue and green like tiny drifting stars. Gargaron had never felt so much joy as to watch her small unblemished face light up in sheer unbridled delight. And to hear her beautiful innocent laughter brought a tear of love to his eyes.
He did not know it, but, sitting here this night alone on the Great Precipice, it would be the last night he would ever see these magical bugs. By sunrise all fireflies would be wiped from existence.
3
He strode to cliff edge. And stood with his eighteen toes poking out over its lip. He gazed down into an almost nothingness below. Down there, growing out from the cliff wall, hugging steadfast to the sheer rock and all its crevices and nooks with a mighty system of barbed roots, were the great Hands of Teyesha that so fascinated him as a boy. Tree-hands that dwarfed his entire giant’s body, limbs and all. Adorned with leaves and branches, and hanging with old vines. And waiting forever, palms upturned, for prey to stumble from precipice down into hungry clutches.
Beyond the Hands, that distant land so far below lay amidst a haze of faint blue and green. As he had done as a boy, he imagined he could see empty spires of forgotten temples, imagined he could see the silent, abandoned sprawl of endless cities.
Endworld, he pondered. How easy might it be to just… step off… and follow my beloved down?
Strange jitters fluttered up through his knees and belly at this thought. The mighty drop seemed to beckon him. Carefully he shuffled back from cliff’s edge, small pebbles falling over and tumbling away into that vast open space below. He let out a deep, slow breath.
4
Both suns were pushing into the horizon and Gargaron turned and set out to hunt down the squealing Mandragorus. He retraced his steps to sandy ground not far back from the precipice. He had watched his father wait for Mandragorus at Starbirth, when dust of cosmos began to twinkle at dusk, waiting quietly, patiently for the wailing root-men to wriggle up from sandy earyth to hunt the night grounds.
And so he sat. Waiting. Patient. Above him, through the overhang of clawtrees waving gently in cool evening breezes, he watched Old Soor wink at him through vast, vast leagues of Great Nothing. Southways he spied the Maidens of Zerrunos, a tight constellation of stars, that in the blackest of moonless nights would dance and glow in patterns of red and blue and gold. And directly northwards hung the Cat’s Eyes, a pair of bright red stars that never averted their gaze from Cloudfyre.
He brought his attention back to ground before him at sounds of stones and dirt stirring. The muted wailing of root-men beneath could be heard. When the first of them broke surface its cries screeched out through scrubby woodland and away over the lip of old Precipice, away and away like birds into twilight. He had heard strange myths that Mandragorus screams could turn some folk to stone. If that were true then Gargaron were glad that his own race seemed immune to such terrifying effects.
He snatched this first root-man in his large fists. Its ugly little demon face glared at him as it squealed and kicked and fought, and rows of deadly fangs gnashed at the crisp air. Gargaron were careful not to let his exposed skin anywhere near that ferocious little maw. A peculiar venom resided there in its spittle, much sought after and milked by plain’s witches. Deadsleep, they called it. It could put even the great Giants to deep slumber for many a day. And would put most other races to death.
He held the Mandragorus at arm’s length… and once more… he waited. As dusk progressed, more stars birthed across Great Nothing. Jenadah danced with Lansador the lover’s dance that Gargaron had watched since he were a boy, two stars caught heavily in each other’s torturous gravity, endlessly, endlessly swirling, swirling, swirling about the other.
More squeals now accompanied a new round of wriggling and shifting in the sand. Gargaron waited with his arm poised, and a second root-man broke surface and he grabbed it.
5
Back by his campfire Gargaron sat down and crossed his mighty legs as embers flurried up into coming dark. Gohor and Melus were but mere glow trails upon the hazy horizon now. And fireflies twinkled magically along the darkened edge of the Precipice. Endworld, far, far, far below, had been swallowed by its gods.
Gargaron held both root-men toward his crackling camp fire, as his father had done, as he had done for his parents, until their squeals faded. Now they sang, transfixed, enchanted by warmth and glow. Gargaron then searched heavens for Ranethor, great God of life, most prominent body in the nightscape of the Great Nothing.
When he saw Ranethor’s stark globe rise upon the north-western horizon he began to pray. For forgiveness. For the souls of the root-men. Prayed that Endworld’s Wraiths would hear his summons.
He waited… waited for a sign from Ranethor.
Then it came: a yellow eye crossed its surface, from east to west, a planetoid in orbit around the blue gas giant, one that mysteriously could only be seen when loved ones were being prepared for their Becoming.
Gargaron stood now, and held his captive root-men against the searing, licking flame. As their long, spindly root legs caught afire they sang, still under enchantment. Gargaron kissed their small earthy heads… and then he tread carefully to precipice’s edge and hurled them out into the abyssal darkness beyond.
Their flames roared and flared angrily as they fell—their angelic song floating up to him—and fell and fell. Until, so far below him, their firelight gently faded out under blankets of inky night.
6
Gargaron sat beside his wife and daughter. He kissed them both. His wife first. Then his daughter, another tear drop rolling off his cheeks, which fell and splashed against her soft skin. As it did its many droplets underwent a swift metamorphosis as tears on Cloudfyre will do when love is both true and deeper than all of the oceans, sprouting wings and legs and arms and small angelic faces, and they all took flight, these tiny fairy creatures, flapping about Veleyal’s face, before alighting gently upon her forehead.
Gargaron lay down between his beloved girls and gazed up at the great cosmic void.
Then he slept.
THE BEGINNING
1
HE had been asleep on the grassy western banks of Buccuyashuck River when the first shockwave passed over him. The large goggling eyes of his Nightface, the visage on the rear of his skull, watched this shockwave pass over. Trees shook and spat out leaves, loose stones and pebbles jiggled and jumped, ornithens took for blue skies only to plummet like stones back to ground as the wave pushed through them, smashing them against bluff and ridge that banded the eastern edge of Buccuyashuck. Swarms of pigmy deer burst from shaded woodland and scattered in a hundred different directions, many dropping dead in mid stride as if shot through their skulls by arrows.
The Nightface lifted its one single appendage, a long finger like spike. And prodded Gargaron’s neck. Though perhaps it were unnecessary—the rumble, shake and groan that had besieged the ground beneath Gargaron, had already begun to stir him.
He swished Nightface’s spiked finger aside, thinking at first it were some big suckyfly come to chew off skin for its nest. When a second prod came Gargaron opened his eyes and looked around, shaking deep dreamy sleep from his mind. As he yawned and looked about he tapped into his Nightface’s most recent memories. Here he saw all that had just transpired. A shockwave rippling madly through the rocky ridge across river. Pigmy deer all bursting from breezy forest. Ornithens taking for clear skies but finding only death as they splat against stony ridge.
