Chapter 42
My beloved is the most beautiful, amongst thousands and thousands.
A stray thought. She contemplated her navel for a time. She may have imagined hearing a distant voice as Eulin flickered above her head.
She couldn’t be sure. It was far away and washed-out by other sounds.
The quartet
un~vanished from nothingness and now emerged beneath the Grand central Dome, as an opportunity to fulfil their mission presented itself.
The Old stones, that built the temple.
Symbolised union between Martian and the Universe as Leer above forever looked down upon the insignificance of their lives, and yet still marvelled at them.
how they valued the finite simple things.
Art & Beauty.
They were magnificent.
But this was something altogether different.
here she presided on the very spot, the seminal narrative for a millennium where the Universe met the trampled earth.
The Universe, a sea of celestial stars.
The land, the sandy Martian soil.
The Brownie, A Silk Faerie.
A force of chaos.
Lanterns illuminated the small cubicles that orbited the boundary of the Dome. And then there was that voice again? That melted softly into the Autumn breeze in some such manner, even the wind had been salved.
Returning to her attention.
She was faced with?
Black rhodium that adorned the knightmares armour as he persevered and was unimpressed. He called upon his ire and commanded with more authority than formerly. Insisting they should relinquish the one wand. The only dilemma was.
No one knew whose custody it was in at all?
It remained a mystery.
“This is your last chance,” he hissed from behind a shroud of chain mail.
“Now, turn over the wand, and I’ll consider letting you live.”
“NOW!”
He noticed the mysterious Sprite standing there, casually, as he caught a shimmer from the fringe of his eye.
She was Beautiful, but Beauty was something he abhorred.
“and what prithee are you?” he asked bluntly as she gawped at him with her vibrant brown eyes.
“don’t you recognise me!?” she asserted in all authority “you really should; I was struck down by your own hand.” she explained darkly,
“Did our lives not matter?”
“were we merely expendable materials for you to stomp over?”
“A frivolous experiment about the mighty and the meek?”.
The fearsome-looking assemblage of plate and scales shuddered as Brownie wondered if he were human at all? “. no,” he answered in accents of almost uncertainty
“if I had slain you… my dear, you would’ve stayed dead, not like that bewitched abomination,” he turned his face with indignation to where Elkie huddled, which was close to Grozette. She twitched her nose, seemingly innocently.
“I’m the Brownie! By the way,”
“yes, I know who you are, perhaps even more than you know yourself! fire flower milk will do that to you!” he gesticulated by pointing to his forehead,
“The Brownie!?,”
“Yes,” she acknowledged, widening her eyes, inviting him towards a tender trap. She stood up a little taller to compose herself more substantially.
“like the house faery that creeps into your household and does benevolent acts… For no other reason than grace…,”
A pleasant smile was emblazed on her face that slowly withered and rounded to disgust.
“do you know what makes me most angry!?” she said, bolstering the sinister tone.
“you hurt my Wyrzel! And that upset me!” she remarked as her lip trembled so faintly it was almost un~seeable.
The stars in their curiosity peeped in through the hollow window places, as the Sprite glanced down upon the marble flooring. It had some motifs with a symbology that had a deeper meaning.
“This is my mansion, and I don’t take kindly on those you who insist, Ill will against its welcome guests,”.
“and what do you intend to do about it?!” he provoked, poked, and prodded her with his remarks.
“I know what you are,” she said, as she saw the entity that was indeed behind the man and phenomenon. The primaeval force that had deceived and created rivalry throughout history, sewing seeds of discourse, which grew into and cultivated the conditions of the original murder.
“I am not afraid of you,”.
“You should be!”
He drew his weapon from its sheath as he spoke to himself.
“well all right then,”
Marching toward them threateningly, moving closer onward to the very spot inside the pentagram as the floor subtly looked darker, like a shadow of a cloud had been cast upon it.
Blacker still until it was dyed black, colourless. Ebony and glossy, a dark mirror and then seemingly impossibly the mirror distorted into a black liquid as he felt himself in sheer seclusion and gripped as if he were sinking in a quagmire. Even the uniformity got more fluid, and he sank deeper and deeper until the floor had utterly absorbed him in one last draught.
“It is done!” she said glancing over to Grozette as the Silk fairy looked over her waiting for something to happen.
There shilly-shallied a rumble, yet faint.
Something unpalatable.
From the very bowels of the earth.
A fracture line stretched along the ground as fissures spread along the floor.
In horror, they observed a hand and the arm of the abomination that was the knightmare. A voice from behind her spoke, “zayn that’s the name,”
it was Grozette.
She joined in the fray as the scene became more imperative.
“The identify of your victim,”
“the name we dare not speak of,” she said in a contrite tone.
Rising Out of the crater, their rival regathered his shape as they saw him transform again into something altogether demonic. Now he was more voluminous and had two immense wings, a tail, and his eyes appeared bloodred.
He squinted at The Grey wizardess as he directed his animus towards her.
Lashing out at her as she sallied forth.
Using his tail as a whip, he catapulted her against one of the pillars with a force that cracked it as Grozette lay broken and crumpled in a heap. Ivry, her sword laid at her side unsheathed, gleaming in the starlight.
As she was unable even to swallow her own saliva.
Exhibiting his sword, he raised it high above his head as he took a moment to smile at her expense. Laughing despicably, mockingly. He prepared himself to deliver the killing stroke, And the Witch looked onwards with dread in her eyes but was impotent of preventing it. She sprawled there, unmoving, resigned. Waiting.
Suddenly a swoosh rushed in as the candlelight flickered circles upon circles as a long black satin streamer looped through the air. Followed by a peal of unnerving laughter and a chattering that emanated from the space above, below, and everywhere in between. Until eventually, it rested and sat before Grozette.
Between them both, the silhouette looked back at her former Master in defiance and simply said in an eerie whisper, “NO! you will not harm my sister, ANYMORE!!”
It was the wraith, Tallulah.
Vociferously she parried his sword by formulating herself into a cryptic letter Y. She readied herself, spun her lance around as she cried out with all of her might, arousing some passion within her and resolve to fight with everything she could muster. Warding him away and holding him where he was. Parry after parry, so he could gain no more ground.
From above descended the great black and amber spider.
Abseiling a silken thread quietly and quickly, down, down from the rafters, as she delivered herself at the target in one last plunge.
Biting into him as soon as she made contact. Injecting all of her venom.
“I’ve got this one Darkwing,” she hissed as the potency of her raw untreated jinku reacted sharply with him. Shaking him to his knees, he clung on to existence and clambered, fighting with them as he chanted incantations in deep earthy tones.
The Silk fairy stood observing the violence and looked a little perturbed as she realised something potent and dangerous had been evoked and was trying to infiltrate this space.
“Auntie,”
“what’s this?”
She said in vain, as it fell on the naked air.
Elkie scampered to Grozettes side. She scooped up her arm with haste, letting her lean upon her as her crutch.
She could barely stand.
“Ooh my head, now I feel all p’khandi,” she declared as she slurred her words and tried to fixate on Elkies face.
“How Do I Look?” inquired the Grey Witch.
Elkie looked upon her, curiously,
As a distant chorus from nowhere sang. In their imagination.
My beloved is the most beautiful, amongst thousands and thousands.
No –
It was not the face she knew. It was something more macabre. Her eyes like needles appeared more piercing than normal, and her hair was alive, like vipers that sat around her crown. Elkie asked herself, was she overly excited or confused? Like those that suckled the blood of the vine. She took a second look. They were coming out of her head, hissing.
The now Gorgon Grozette said sharply, “ELKIE!” as if calling her back from a daydream.
She looked at her eyes wide and mouth agog. Grozette sighed and said.
“you asked me once upon a time, what the price was up in my lodge, do you remember? …… Today You will learn,”.
Taking no comfort in her speech. She stood forlorn, thinking exceedingly long and loud thoughts, her grief showed in her demeanour. The hungry ghost recalled what she had learned about compassion.
“I need you to wield my sword Ivry, for a final time,” she blurted out randomly as if realising the answer to a riddle that slipped through her fingers, as her face looked deadly serious. She inclined her head to make eye contact once again.
“what do you want me to do with her?” asked Elkie as she tripped through her wires, sensing the answer would be grim and terrible. She looked at her.
Her face was back to its natural form. Handsome Grozette. The Pa’ mina, they all knew. She smiled and looked at her, dead in the eyes and again looked fragile and vulnerable.
“sometimes life… Can be too short. But it also can be very incredibly long.”
There was a pause.
“, and it can make you wish for peace, an asylum for the soul,”
“what are you saying?” asked Elkie, intoxicated.
“a sacrifice must be made. We hailed the agents of causality here, long ago, before even your great-grandmothers’ grandmother was conceived. An’ they cannot leave without restitution of the highest cost,”
She answered enigmatically as it dawned on her. She was asking for help to commit seppuku.
“Please! Don’t tell me what I think you’re suggesting, because you’re breaking my heart… An’i, I feel miserable,”.
Her eyes swelled with tears as if a levee were about to burst.
“it’s ok to feel anxious! sadness and death are just parts interwoven of life Elkie, we’re all stories, in the end.”
“I know that!” she snapped, clinking her heels begrudgingly, Grozette tried to smile.
“Now I aspire to emancipate from that cycle. I call for you to help me,”
“no, no, NO!”
She whimpered, as if it were out of the question, shaking her head, having an outburst, wincing in terror. Still, it served her no good. The sorrow of the moment was too heavy. A tragedy in the making that waited for them.
“how could I… I. I have deference for you;”
she affirmed, trying to change the subject in the foolish hope that it would all pass away before realising she was cognisant, and that it wasn’t going anywhere.
“I won’t…” she sobbed with tears in her bright amber eyes and a long heartache, “Do that! I couldn’t.”
“please baby girl… it’s the only way,” she said, pleading with her.
“life is. Like a reunion, we shall meet again, my precious one,” she proclaimed, touching her cheek, wiping her tears aside.
She placed the sword point to her breast. It was then Elkie noticed the one wand nestled away beneath her doublet.
“pierce the wand and press it deep into my heart,”
Elkie could not think straight as cold tears fell like rain and chapped her once rosy cheeks.
“please, I, I can’t!” she stammered.
“I know you have strength Elkie,” a single tear streaked down Grozettes cheek.
“I’m going to close my eyes now, just like I’m praying to Leer.”
“I… I” dumbstruck Elkie struggled, But Grozette calmly interrupted with words just above a whisper.
“please release me, little one… this is a mercy!”
As she continued to recover words of virtue and integrity. She said in a firm voice without fear or Quiddit.
“He who dwelleth in the shadow of the most high will abide in the cool shade of the Almighty; I will say unto the stars in their heavens. Leer is my refuge and my fortress,”.
Resigned, the littlest ghost closed her eyes, scrunched her face up and took a deep breath. She lurched forward and heard a short, painful gasp from Grozette expel.
tetelestai.
For Grozette it was over….
But what of The Silk faery?
Grim-faced, she realised it was not something breaking through; it was the paramour of monsters herself Tiamat.
As the very foundations of the temple shook and an apocalyptic chill cast upon them all. Lightning stabbed at the ramparts, and the wind was kindled, and the heavens cast down its rain like arrows.
Pelting down and marching like soldiers through the vacant windows and dribbling down from viewing holes that sat around the boundary of the rotunda.
“eeeeeuuuulin, find the moon goddess!”
She said with urgency in her voice, sending the tiny sphere of light away from her.
Tallulah cried out to the lightning, “I denounce wickedness, and I WILL rekindle my heart,”
She was encouraged by it as she raised her fist and lance skyward. The cuckoo-bee-spider and the wraith, at last, stood over their vanquished foe who was on his knees gasping, fighting for his last breath.
He whimpered between wheezing and huffing as he began to come apart. His outer exoskeleton began to implode as if something as small as a minute pinprick pulled at his black guts, dragging them through the eye of a needle.
He screamed in torment and misery. As much as someone could, that was not present in the natural world.
“I do not feel one bit sorry for him, sister,” said the substantial spider
“go back to the void whence you came!” Added Tal.
The sky seemed darker as clouds overshadowed the heavens. The only light was the intermittent flare of lightning, which was accompanied by the rattle of thunder.
The Silk faery Muttered to herself.
“oh no,”
As something profoundly alien and cruel was virtually standing amongst them.
Grozettes body shuddered as Elkie cradled her in her arms, which were now marked in her blood. Her face was lucid as a lustre of light radiated out of her.
“the magic is leaving me,”
“hush now” asserted the winette haired girl as if they had exchanged roles, and now at the edge of the unknown, she had been pronounced mother. Unconditionally staying with her until the end.
It was the only thing she knew how to do.
she kissed her forehead and brushed her hair, as she wrapped her up in her small appendages and covered her wound in her pashmina “we shall meet again…. between the spaces.”
“thank you for being my salvation,”
she uttered as finally her eyes were laid to rest and her face, at long last, was still.
She looked at peace. Secretly, the littlest ghost envied her. But was buoyed by the sentiment. She thought, if only she had many winters and summers of natural life in front of her, to honour her.
What a shame.
Oh, how she wished it were so!
But despaired that it was just a fantasy.
Thank you for being my salvation – those were Grozettes final words. as, finally, her body came apart emancipated, and her mortal remains spread like embers in the autumn breeze.
Tallulah gazed back at her sister’s worldly remains, little more than a silhouette that was blacker than a witch’s cat. She looked forward to the Maître’d. With warmth broadcasted from out of her amber eyes… Saluted held her lance one last time and yielded herself to the wind as black plumes of the tiniest size scattered into the ether and joined her sister in dis-corporation.
The world would know them no more.
However.
It was not over yet.
As something more compelling and distinctly darker gripped their attention, the voice of Joro was overheard to recite.
“behold, Tiamat, mother of monsters. Cometh with great fear and trembling and legions of many shadow children. The original succubus.”
With dread they forecast, one by one, the pitfalls of hell that awaited for them. The little Sprite added the commendation that was almost sympathetic.
“I have looked into the abyss and seen all the universe ablaze, and even the skies of spring and blossoms of summer must ever thereafter be a poison unto me.”
“The decent of Tiamat.” Identified the maître’d.
Darkness encroached ever onwards as it began to suffocate the light as Joro and Elkie stood behind the Silk faerie. Unsure of what now would happen to them, as desperation clung to them and increased its grip on them, like creeping vines. Twisting, throttling, and growing in torc.
“HUSH now all of you; let me do the talking.”
As the markings on the Brownies skin seemed to stand out a bit more vibrantly in the dark.
The pentagram where they stood. Its inscriptions also resonated with light.
They harkened a banging like someone was rapping on a door awaiting to be invited in.
“I hear you knocking desolate one,”
“all the gates are open,”
Announced the Brownie to the darkness. As a set of red eyes could be seen to cut through the dark.
A wailing noise and a madness washed over them. Imagery drenched their minds eye of plague and creatures of nightmares and pictures of themselves traversing channels of blood.
And a voice lugubrious spoke.
“grant me the wish.”
“I cannot grant you the wish!” said the Silk faerie into the void,
“it is taken.”
After a long uncomfortable silence, a voice came back.
“then I shall be the one taking it,”
On Que, the small orb of light that was Eulin descended. From nowhere. As his halo of light was undimmed by the blackness. He seemed to drift to the little Sprite’s ear.
“you will not take the wish,”
she said in scorn, and to add insult to injury, she replied with a scowl etched upon her face.
“go away!!!!”.
No miracles or vulgar displays of power, just the words of the littlest Brownie, a lowly fairy who stood in the dark, not alone but with friends, and that meant her heart was uplifted by fellowship.
— the darkness. Seemed to stop encroaching
“this place is failing!” she said, casting her gaze around the temple’s extremities.
“Jn Joro can you fly us,”
“I’ll accept the bet and say Yesssshhh!! Spiders always keep their promises,”
She said with great irony as she gathered them in her legs and pointed her spinneret and abdomen skyward.
The ceiling started to split open. The columns started to crumble.
The Brownie closed her eyes tightly, held onto her key like their very souls depended upon it and squeezed her fingers onto the painite ruby.
Suddenly they were outside in the courtyard—their blood pumping.
They waited for Joro to act.
She surveyed the courtyard, looked around and shot a trinity of yarn into the sky. Like she was casting a lure for fishing.
Right up into the jet stream. The wind caught it and tethered them into the air.
Their feet sharply were tugged from the ground: all 11 and 3 quarters of them.
They were flying like in a balloon as they drifted through the eye of a tornado. The natural order was correcting itself.
The temple began to collapse and sluther into the ocean.
Only a few Sea-lashed stones remained as they ascended through the air beneath a sky that was becoming steadily clearer.
They floated onwards, upwards and beneath a night rainbow that poked through the clouds.
And in the next breath, it was day. They were peering down from above at a tranquil bright sea of aquamarine, as they spied a reverent barge of pure white just where it was needed the most.
They descended slowly, and with cooperation from Elkie and Brownie, they landed effortlessly on the deck of the ocean vessel. Wrangling their eight-legged friend to the ground like a living dirigible.
Shellshocked. They heard that voice again, only to recognise the sound of the moon goddess Yeva.
“I’ll just quickly slip into something more convenient,”
declared the spider, as if someone were paying attention, but no one was.
There were merely 3 of them now, and the tiny sphere that was a particle of the White Phoenix.
Turning around, they discovered the human form of Joro tall and regal walking with a hobble.
“Don’t help me” she scolded.
“It’s troublesome to walk in these?!”
She said as if describing a pair of boots.
And over their shoulders, they saw the contour of the moon’s princess Yeva in the intense sunshine.