Chapter 40

 

It starts with one.

 

One with the desire to endure beyond prudence. A lone blade of grass that refuses to lie down in the breeze, as the wind boisterous and undaunting is tested.

 

Deep within the caverns of Lifrin, two forgotten burial mounds of stones remained overlooked amongst the craggy shale that no human hand had placed. One immense and one much smaller.

 

Inside, the heap slighter in size.

The young Attaché braced his torso against the rocks as he strained with all the strength he could muster. Yet he found himself coming up short of even budging them an inch. He cursed his beloveds’ fate as Sweat and tears rushed out of him, a human lentil, shoring the inside the of the cairn.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said as he denounced his frailties, and faced the bleak proposition that he in some measure was not fit for purpose.

 

He ruminated over, trying one final undertaking as he pressed his back once more to the corbeled stones. Determined that this would not be their Ossuary. He pushed with all his might. Hearing a solitary stone crash to the floor with a clink, he witnessed a thin slither of light permeate the walls. As a gentle breeze rushed in, caressing his hot skin, softly like a lover… And then… He thought he heard an echo of chirping coming from outside, though faded it persisted.

It was familiar, he almost recognised it, and pleasant thoughts were attached to it. He saw what he could only characterise as a dark shadow slimly seeping through the crevices.

 

Pungent, moist and slug-like, bleeding in between the stones. It was in here?  He began to buckle under the pressure; unable to brace all the weight for another minute as he panted his heart out and glanced worriedly below at ūnas crumpled body and felt his heart quicken to a pace that the rest of his young bones could barely keep up with.

“NO, NO!” he said, scolding the invader that had infiltrated his space. His eyes pained him as if he had thorns needling them “Shoo, fsssttt’…. please, get lost,” he said, being as rude as he could stomach in good conscience.

“purlease!” he reiterated.

 

He peered down at ūna her lips moved, but her eyes were shut tight. She seemed to be reciting verse barely audibly above a murmur “have faith, all you tired and weary, take up refuge in me, for I shall give you rest in my bosom, and ye’ shall know my grace,”

 

Somehow, he felt his burden lighten as if the slithering invader was not trying to harm him, but somehow, quite incomprehensibly, it wished to aid him! With one final push, he levered his body against the stones and felt the rocks above him move. An impossible feat, yet, inside it ignited a fire on the very fumes of all that he had remaining as he dug deep and found some extra strength. It outlined the type of resolve that he possessed.

 

Until they, at last, were free.

 

Beholding the viscera of the cavern. He collapsed with his swollen eyes that could barely see; the shale dust hung in the atmosphere as he clambered back to his feet, slowly in the aperture of distant light cast by the cave mouth. He faintly made out the strange, beautiful face; if you could call it a face of the Nudibrym Rex—glaring back at him in the cavenlight like a devoted hound-dog reunited with his reliable masters at long last.

 

He snuffled around, savouring his pheromones.

“Rex! is that you?” he said, “if you had lips, I’d kiss you, right now!” Vee bent himself back into the shape he remembered. And, with his last strength, he scooped ūna up and held her.

Her eyes opened narrowly, as he cradled her in his arms, though they looked heavy set as he gasped and laid her upon Rex’s hunches. He stared back towards the ridge of stones that had interred the Whirlygig and wondered if they could escape. Could it also, too?

 

“come on Rex, let’s get Mama’ to safety!”  he said as the pretty coloured gastropod clicked in assurance… as they limped up the channels towards Aranmore.

 

He had given it little regard, but ūna in her fraught state, saw that; it was not mighty Witches, Warriors or even the guile of the Faeries that had defeated the old scourge of the ancient world, it was the fortitude and persistence of a gentle, unassuming attaché, who wouldn’t even curse at the lowliest of creatures.

 

 

——-

 

The sun shone quieter today if it made any noise at all, as the tetchy old maid looty moved scratchily and took stock on Numbers that of the healthy, and the injured and the exempt as she made a registrar of human resources. She looked on as she saw the dark figure of Tumjai wandered lowly into the fort. He said nothing as the current chain of events weighted heavily on his brow. He looked a worried man indeed, and that meant many demons would follow, bringing hardships and miseries.

 

The slight stature of the mayor stood amongst some of the refugees as he stood across from Jai and looty seemingly less relevant now as this was an occasion for warriors and not politicians “where’s ūna and Vee Vee,” he inquired.

“I am sorry, they fell,” mussitated Tumjai as if that transpired to be all he would say in totality. “these indeed are black hours,” he replied as he felt the imminent futility of his own mortality. He saluted and turned away in mourning, and he showed himself to be weeping as looty consoled him and rubbed his back, saying there, there.

 

Tumjai looked upon the weird box that Emrys lived in as an icy chill shrouded him. He cleared his throat. “the enemy now is death, stay alive people, and be ready,” as he walked away to a quiet corner where he could be secluded, and he slumped down into a jumble  with a bottle of moonflower cider to be alone and to anaesthetise  his regrets.

 

—-

“Captain are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Ash Vani as the three women languidly floated along.

 

The hills were swarming with the Shae. Rushing through the undergrowth, they were easy to spot with the trained eye, as the thick vegetation showed their whereabouts and their roving’s.

 

A makeshift canoe was all that sat between them and being down beneath the waves of the River. It wasn’t really river worthy, just some old log the resourceful Leftenant had repurposed.

 

Still, they drifted down the waterway; the course ahead got mistier and eerier as Min sculled with the only paddle. They floated for a moment through plant matter on the water surface, onwards into the miasma for the old fort. Carefully trying to evade the spines that were hewn out of Wyn trees and were now the deadliest of venomous booby traps. Some stood proudly above the water margin. Others were much harder to spot. They looked around at the inhuman construction of works more superstitious Martians might have deemed to be unnatural—symbols of the occult and bait for wilder creatures, like Meer-wolves and unfriendlier beasties.

 

“No!” Replied Min, to the earlier question, purveying the area “I’m not sure it is … but I don’t see what other alternatives we have?”

“we’d be taking her majesty into parliamentary authority,” she said looking at the blind monarch who sat wedged between the two warriors, quietly listening to the sounds of the waves sloshing all about her as she clung onto Mins waist like a human anchor “we need to convince them that she is just a gypsy in need of our aid,” Min nodded and added “and remind them that, the real enemy is out there,” as they looked towards the aquamarine waters and rolling banks that were a causeway to Mārin village and beyond to the scarecrow-like effigy’s that instilled fear and uneasiness into those that were unwelcome.

 

“I hope the Tillas are ok,”

“they’ll never catch them, captain, they’re probably back at H.Q by now!”

“I hope so?”

 

—–

 

 

Meet you at the crossroads, said the wind to the boy, in the story… So, you won’t be lonely.

 

Li kay recalled telling that tale to Elkie. She used to pledge the heavens and the earth to be mesmerised once more, to recite the well-worn verses as they had been handed down, lovingly from generation to generation.

 

The crossroads was simply a metaphor for limbo, halfway between the twilight and the dawn—a moot point. The time of wandering along blindly in the hope that your instincts were sharp enough to buy you precious time.

 

Only one more hour. Surely that would be enough? Surely, he could put himself up as collateral for that measure of time, mused the boy.

 

He was indeed ignorant of many things knowing being one of them.

 

The unbridled wind would issue a warning “the way is shut, mortal.”

As he pushed on up the causeway, in disregard, seething with tears in his eyes.” this is real life!” he shrieked, a conscientious objector.

 

But The wind has no compassion; it is utterly a foreign concept and the softest shade of loud.

“why not save yourself?” it roared.

“because I know a secret that I dare not utter,” answered the boy proselytising.

 

The wind slightly vexed said “return whence you came, and embrace the slow state of decay like all other living things, or You shall force my hand, to demolish you hence,”

 

In contempt, he pressed on, deafened to the warnings. Though he felt his way obscured and his footsteps laboured “I can do it, I can do it, I CAN DO IT!”  he told himself, with each affirmation louder than the first. “Why continue!?” Asserted the tempest. The youngster mocked him every step of the way. He answered tritely “because I have too, I have something you wouldn’t understand,”

“and what prithee is that?” Pleaded the storm as it lulled its raging in bewilderment and cast its eye around him.

“A SOUL and things weigh heavy upon it” He peeked up at the clear sky as the clouds broke and a steady ray of sunshine burst upon him. “You… Don’t do you; you don’t have one!”

“how do I…. get…. a soul?” demanded the elemental nymphishly.

“I’m afraid I can’t give you the answer,”

The tempest began, once more to rage, as anything at all that could move did, so as the fury of the wind unleashed its wrath “prepare to fly foolish mortal,” as the boy shouted “wait, WAIT, there’s something I can do? That’s nearly as good!”

“Nearly as good? What’s nearly as good as a soul,” it inquired?

“I can personify you, give you an identity and a character!”

“SO WHAT?!?” It snapped as if none of that really mattered. “well then, you’d have a reputation, people could have feelings about you that were aspired to you. Your bad deeds, but also your good deeds would stick to you and people could learn to like you, even love you!”

“love me?”

“Oh, yes!”

“and how would all this transpire?”

Asked the wind sceptically, “I’d have to give you a name,”

“is that all?”

“well, no!” remarked the boy “you’d have to acknowledge your name if someone called it,”

“I don’t like that idea, I’d be at everyone’s beckon call all the time, and I haven’t got time for that, who’d herd all the clouds?” it garbled inflating its importance, “well what if I… were amongst the few to know your name, certainly you would have to know it too,”

“I don’t know of a name I’d like?” it said solemnly?

 

The boy always named the wind. When he told the fable, it was chiefly Elkies name; she used to chuckle aloud, rejoicing. Barely old enough to utter full sentences, yet she used to say, “but that’s my name!” In amusement, as she grinned from behind a drapery of winette coloured ringlets, showing the dimples in her rosy cheeks. She was truly a happy child at the prospect of sharing her name with the restless wind.

 

But his mind always strayed further back to when the wind had his name also, and he felt moved by the magic and majesty of the story in his own beating heart.

 

The lesson in the story was a simple one. That names have power.

 

But who named the knightmare he wondered?

 

As he journeyed up the empty promenade,

It was a no-man’s-land. As he stood on a corner dishevelled, he laid his gaze upon a lonely civiccat—a kindred spirit, perhaps.

 

It had a plush cinnamon coat. It must have been lost like him.

 

stroking it, he said aloud “how goes the day soldier?”

 

As it mewed back and forth against the rugged privet that had been untended since the conflict.

 

He realised a haunting presence behind him softly, subtly almost mistakable for something else as he smiled to himself and looked over the lie of the land. Noticing exits and defendable areas.

“so that’s what you are an assassin,” he said to the open air as he recalled fondly another strange entanglement of a supernatural kind with another peculiar creature.

“no!” a familiar voice replied as close to him as his jugular vein “actually a spiritwalker,”

 

It was the svelte frame of Vir Okota, “you’re slipping Okota!” said Li Kay. “That’s what you think, sir,” he answered with a note of cynicism. “I have to report; some necromancers were doing distasteful. Things,”

“were?” remarked Kay.

Okota smiled, he was after all acknowledged as the high-handed misery… “oh! I see. Have you marked the targets as I asked?”

“aye sir, I may seem addled, but I have Arranged the things you’ve’ asked for,”

“good” answered Kay.

As he sighed “now, we have to go and parley with their general; a one-eyed ogre called Lo Ki,”

“be wary of treachery, sir,” warned Okota “oh, I don’t expect reason to work on him, hmm, I’ve met him before y’ know, at the Warriors’ Gate… it didn’t go down well, he’ll be out for retribution. I know it,” he said portentously. “don’t worry Grand Marshal… I’ve got your back,”

——

 

The Tillas were more restless than usual. They sat up in the pasture and turned their faces toward the peripheries as they looked out with their bug eyes humming and swaying rhythmically to a liturgy only known by their own kin.

 

The herd stood apiqued and excited in the paddock. A stone’s throw away from the strange monument colloquially known to natives as the sleeping centurion.

 

The great behemoth stood on guard as he peeked out of the rich soil of Kalithia and watched forlornly. A memento to an older godless time when fire and ash burned the sky, and the sun was charred black. And the gods were nowhere to be found as Tiamat unleashed the monsters onto the world.

 

-Or so the old folk say when they weave their narratives to regale the young and the impressionable, an admonition of the folly of progress, without principles.

 

Still, the Mantillas were aroused by something that they perceived to be arriving.

 

Aranmore long had it existed in the province of Kalithia, and some more excitable chroniclers would account that it was even older than history itself.

A fantastical claim.

 

And Yet science was at a loss to fathom entirely how it was constructed, and engineers were impotent of recreating the intricacies of its craftsmanship.

 

But now, it stood just a ruin, its finest hour scratched out from the records.

 

Underneath the memory of starlight, with the lonely mountain at its back, casting its shadow over the leafy borough of Mārin village a sleeper cell that had an obvious line of sight to the eyrie peeking out of the distant horizon.

 

A stirring of loose rocks fell down the mountainside, only mere pebbles. As the considerable bulk of Rex effortlessly surfed down the mountainous path followed by the gate and swagger of the gravely exhausted Vee as he trudged through the heather.

 

Why do they make so many steps, he wondered quite illogically as he heard himself heave and wheeze more than he would have liked?

He propped himself up against a rock. As he said out loud, “remind me never to mock your stride again,” the sun stung his eyes blindingly, and in a moment of lucidity he heard a female voice say sweetly “wake up VEE!” it was the voice of his mother. Rex looked back toward him and mooed as if to usher the young Martian who looked wilted and fatigued because he knew in some way, shape or form, that he was failing.

 

He felt as if, the earth would swallow him whole, as not only his lungs hurt but his heart and spirit felt bruised too, he was unsure if he could make it down the mountain as the fort looked still so very far away to him. “Rex, go on ahead, take oon to safety… I… I think I’m just going to rest up a while, against this rock,” he said finding a beautifully smooth rock that in more benign times, countryfolk, would frolic on, reclining, nature bathing soaking in the surroundings, without a care in the world.

 

His eyes seemed heavier. Rex spiralled back toward him. As he turned his face in his general direction, if he had eyes to see like you or I, he would have noticed Vees were bloodshot and densely surrounded by dark circles. He appeared to be a man who subsisted, a mere shadow of himself.

The Nudibrym bellowed at him like a horn to provoke some vigour within him. But it was no good. His spirits were sinking as he embraced other possibilities “I know, I know” he said as his lip quivered. “you won’t let me quit, will you?”

 

In the paddock, the Tillas were troubled as they were making some commotion as Ibliss, was running around frantically, raising up on his hindquarters so much, that the stable hands were called to attention.  “I’ve never seen one like this,” an old rancher called out. As before they could ready any provisions for calming them, Ibliss had lept right over them and was proceeding towards the mountain at a thunderous pace.

 

 

Vee took a deep breath of the country air and tried to gather himself to face the last part of the descent.

 

It was not long before they heard the galloping of something coming to meet them. “hide!” he said pitifully as it came closer and closer, all he had the stamina to do was to squash himself down behind a boulder. Holding his breath, he said a brief prayer to Leer… In the hope that it would pass.

 

But it didn’t pass, and it was drawing nearer; he could hear the sound of a Tilla he wondered if it had a rider as it seemed to linger just on the other side of the rock he was hunched behind.

 

He heard the stridulation of its legs, and its heavy claw rap on the rock, his rock that he was hiding behind and listened to the slow turn and deadpan silence of the creature perusing the environment. He glanced over to Rex, who seemed excited as he ferried the unconscious ūna to meet the threat.

 

Too weak to stop him as all he could muster was a hand gesture to warn him, as he fell backwards in the moss that grew on the flanks of the mountain, it was too late. He waited in fear, the crippling fear of the unknown, as Kay would have called it, the deep breath before the plunge.

 

He took refuge in something holy as he recalled a verse.

If this world hates you, you should know that it hated me ever before, it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would revere you as its own. Yet because you are not of this world, because I cultivated you out of this world, then it will despise you. He heard the presence and felt the mantilla above him as it gasped, and made a soothing chirping sound he had heard before, he slowly raised his eyes to see a sight of beauty it was the fiery red compound eyes of Iblis staring back at him.

 

“Ok,” he said ironically taking charge, he declared, “this time, I get to ride the big Mantilla,” as he directed his words toward the unconscious ūna. With the help of Ibliss, he managed to fold himself limp over his saddle.  he felt assured by his presence  that it was ok to finally let go. He gazed down the slope toward the fort a final time before he passed out. Their fate was intertwined and not in anyone’s hands. Just the claw and foot of these faithful creatures, Leer had given them a symbiotic connection, and hopefully, that would lead them on, to safety and  grace.