Hunted

  The haunted

  Singer of laments

  To the source

  Return

  ALLORY KNEW THAT HER friends, new and old, had been heavily hit by the attack. Many sore heads, bruises and three broken limbs from unavoidable falls were the immediate cost. Thankfully, most of their group had been on ground level when the attack hit. Chenixipi and Garobixi worked on their patients while listening in. A soft tittering of mirth now, even from the injured, reassured her of the presence of resilience, even fresh camaraderie, amongst their number. While the platform had been laid by the Jokerbro and Xiximay’s hilarious interaction, she found herself wishing for the eloquence of Harzune rather than this hesitancy that consumed her non-existent tongue.

  Before she could formulate words, the Golden Purrmaine said, “That was an attack like many before, but hugely magnified, frrr-hsst? I fear our enemy has grown in power, yet also has expended great power without achieving overall success.”

  “What does an entity of such unbounded evil consider to be success?” Barakunal inquired softly, yet his question carved out a terrible silence. “Does the Wraith conspire to destroy Middlesun itself? I thought the plan was somehow to seize power, not to destroy all of Spheris.”

  “Maybe to the Wraith, those goals are synonymous?” Jhoranyal interjected.

  To a man or woman, his Dark Elf troops spat upon the grass and made signs across their eyes that Allory interpreted as warding against evil. Fair enough.

  Suggids. Maybe success is now within its grasp … could the Wraith be tapping into our Scintillant power, somehow? What does he know about the boneyard, intend for it, hope it will give him? Immortality? Something more?

  “Allory, what say you to this?” Yaarah purred.

  “She is alive,” Allory heard herself whisper.

  Despite her timid interjection, the assertion rang like a soft bell about their strange congregation, effortlessly capturing their curiosity.

  The Felidragon nodded. “Go on.”

  Deep breath. “Our Middlesun is alive,” she said, finally fumbling her way to the truth. Aye! Words flowed like sweet sap upon her tongue. “I want you all to understand this: She is an intelligent, feeling entity of a kind I don’t understand, but I believe she’d identify best as feminine. During the attack, I sensed her presence. She appears somehow … well, I could try to show you, maybe like … this?”

  She struggled to school her sparkles into performing as she wished. Failure. Suggids – no. That shrinking Allory was no more.

  “Sorry. Give me a moment. Uh, Hansanori?”

  “Allory Fae?”

  “Could you –” What was she even asking? Allory wriggled her sparkle-flotilla with what she hoped was some form of meaningfulness.

  The silver eyes brightened at once. “You wish me to compose a melody in celebration of the intrinsic beauty of sunlight? Of course. May my service be acceptable.”

  That man’s so intuitive it’s almost scary …

  When he wasn’t ducking his responsibilities at top speed.

  Weak sunlight peeped through the drifting smoke with a greyish cast no-one had ever seen before, not even when the light filtered through an early jungle or forest mist. Day of evil. Allory discovered her new form could feel something very close to nausea. This was wrong. So very wrong. How could any mortal creature ever hope to heal an entity as vast and powerful as Middlesun itself? Despair twisted her thoughts into morose knots.

  Why me? Why the runt?

  Ugh. Why such a whiny girlfae? She gave that mental voice a firm slap and felt much better for it.

  Perching his behind upon a thick blue-green tussock of grass, Hansanori gathered his concentration with the mastery of a consummate performer. It seemed he merely needed to inhale to capture the devotion of every ear.

  Adroitly, he caressed the strings.

  Somebody sighed as the legendary Astral Harp extended itself at once. With a startled chuckle of his own, Hansanori gave his bare toes a preparatory waggle and stretched out his wing-clusters to touch the corresponding astral wings – if one could call them such – of the instrument. Why not the antennae … whereupon, as if directly responding to Allory’s thought, a delicate fan-like arrangement of strings sprang into being just above the Harpist’s head.

  He scratched his chin. “Eh? That’s new.”

  The beautiful silver eyes flicked aside to light upon her being. Allory tried to shrug by way of reply. Odd things tended to happen around her. No idea why.

  At length, Hansanori exhaled, “Alright, flowing with the nectar here … a musical impromptu … aye. Here we go.”

  He set out to spin silken threads of musical sunlight. His toes furnished deep, sonorous notes midway between the breathy tones of a wooden flute and the plucking of harp strings. His fingers wove cascades of plinking magic. The wing harmonics he provided added haunting, overarching strains to each exquisite phrase, while the antennae strings spun notes almost unrecognisable as ordinary music but which tugged instead at the heartstrings of his audience. It took Hansanori a perceptible moment to find the cut of his wings, as the Fae would say, to explore the capabilities available to him and to allow his imagination free reign. Then, a sunlit wonderland unfolded before her, Middlesun pristine in an unblemished Centresky, the full glory of her gaze beaming down upon the interior of their world; here, sunlight sparkled playfully off the surface of a rippling brook, there dappling through leaves, now evoking a touch of scintillance.

  His musicianship unleashed Allory to dance, but not in a way she ever had before. This time, at least for a few breathless seconds, she found herself able to imitate the ever-infolding blossoms of Middlesun.

  An imperfect homage to the mighty entity.

  Tiny as her gesture was, she sensed an echo undulating beyond the bounds of her being, passing through her perception of reality in a way which was impossible to quantify. After several breathless seconds, a faint pulsation of azure magic returned to her. Although it was almost devoid of strength or warmth, the signature could not be mistaken.

  Soul Blossom!

  The image evolving in her soul’s perception educed a similar response from her Scintillant nature. It took her what felt like an aeon to work out that this meant communication.

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  Allory knew that mimicry was a first step, a Faeling’s step toward mutual understanding. Briefly, the sunlight strengthened about her until her dancing cast flickering patterns of light across her companions’ faces and bodies, before it halted as abruptly as it had begun. Exhausted, perhaps? After supplying her last trickle of healing magic, Allory allowed the connection to drop. Loss. Loss and sadness. Soul Blossom had been gravely wounded, she sensed. With the best will in Spheris, what could a single tiny Fae ever do for her that would make a difference? Would the Shyraiama Dragons recover? Would Middlesun ever shine as she had before, or was this the dimming of an aeon, the passing of an age?

  How could she give voice to this torrent of grief rather than drowning in it? Only by pretending it did not exist, locking it away, as she had done all her life.

  At last, Allory chose to say, simply, “That is how she appears to me. If she speaks a language, then I do not know what it is, but I do know that she responds to expressions of love and to connection via music, dance and scintillance. One theory of the formation of our world suggests that Middlesun is a cosmic entity which, untold millennia in the past, drew the shell we call Spheris around itself for protection from destructive external forces, perhaps as a means of concealment or a safe haven wherein she could develop and mature into a new, transcendental state of being. I have begun to wonder if she was dormant before and might therefore have been immune to the Wraith’s attacks, but lately, she has become vulnerable as we ourselves have experienced.”

  Or, could this vulnerability hint at an imminent ascension to a new state of being? Would anything that she knew survive that event?

  That catastrophe?

  She did not want to think about such eventualities.

  “If I may, mrrr-hrrr?” Yaarah put in. Allory nodded. “We have discovered that many, many Scintillant Fae have been taken into captivity over the past decades. It is possible that the enemy might at last have made a breakthrough, discovering how to turn Scintillant magical capabilities to his greatest advantage. That may explain the massively increased amplitude of this attack.”

  “Aye.”

  Allory forced the word past the jagged resistance of her mind. The urge to flee, to hide deep, to pretend that nothing so horrendous could ever happen to Spheris, was almost overwhelming. Could racial trauma be passed down through the Scintillant generations?

  Shake the sparkles. Shake it off!

  Unsteady of voice, she said, “The Wraith might well understand this Scintillant Faerie link or affinity with Middlesun far better than I do. What I do know is that everything is connected. The sun not only gifts heat and light to our world through her interaction with the Shyraiama Dragons, coursing eternally about her sphere, but she is also an almighty source of magic. That magic is inextricably linked with all life as we know it inside this globe we call Spheris. An example of this linkage is the cycle whereby the Sentinel Trees receive power from Middlesun and, I imagine, transform it somehow before passing it back during each day. They bleed excess heat away into a realm none of us has ever seen, a realm called outer space, where there may be many stars – many beautiful entities like our Middlesun.”

  Yaarah exhaled softly, “Oh, Allory …”

  “Aye, my friend,” she said, finding a twinkle of her being replaced the expression of smiling. “The abiding life of the Suylas Deepwoods, the strength of Giants, the extraordinary magic of Dragons, the nurturing power of Elves and the many manifestations of Fae life all owe their very existence to our Middlesun. I believe our paramount duty is to protect her because she is our world. Like sap, her magical life flows through each one of us and we cannot continue to exist without her gift.”

  Many sober nods attended her speech.

  Encouraged, she added, “Another thing I suspect, is that the Wraith may well be a secondary parasite. That is, I believe it may act as a parasite upon the parasites called the Ascended Septuani, or the vampiari spirits. Since my childhood I have been cursed with visions in which … I have seen and observed their behaviour. Often.”

  Cursed? Or gifted? The soul locket had once been gifted to her under the greatest duress, but how much should she reveal of this secret?

  “I am no Fae Philosopher or mystic, but as best I understand, the vampiari feed upon the soul-magic of those who die. Somehow, as a Scintillant of unusual abilities, I am able to snoop on their activity. With Yaarah’s help, I’ve been able to track the origin of these attacks, and to identify a causal link between how the vampiari are behaving and how the power is being stolen from their beings by the Wraith.”

  Yaarah huffed crossly.

  No-one could fail to mistake his offended reaction.

  Allory snuck over to him and settled her sparkles in her old position atop his shoulders. “I apologise, friend Felidragon. I’m only just working things out in my head and there is much I still do not understand. I don’t know how the vampiari gain access to the dead, nor even what death even means if I am able to snatch some people and creatures back – out of death, perhaps – and return them to life, as you have observed.”

  Several of the Dark Elves muttered angrily; Jhoranyal quelled them with a word. He said, “To us, such a power as you claim would be anathema. Is this true?”

  Ashueli said, “Aye, it is true. Many of us have seen and bear witness to her power. Out in the Canyonlands, we came upon an almighty battle between Dragons, Fire Raptors and the Giant tribes. There, with the help of Middlesun’s own power, Allory raised one hundred and ninety-two of the Giant-kind back to life. She did the same for our allies when we arrived in the Suylas Deepwoods after a fierce battle with the Marakusians.”

  Jhoranyal’s face became so expressionless, Allory guessed he did not wish to contradict his fiancée in public for fear of dishonouring her testimony.

  “Unless those souls were not truly dead?” Zzuriel put in unexpectedly.

  The giant Elf directed a humdinger of a frown, like a visual thunderstorm complete with lightning and hail, at her. “What do you mean, Zzuriel?”

  The Diamond Faerie shivered visibly, the air surrounding her crackling with increasing cold as her emotions peaked. Xiximay snuck closer as the Diamond Fae explained in an unsteady voice, “I too used to doubt the continued existence of a soul after death. My people believe in the immortality of the soul, but I … I struggle to, Jhoranyal.”

  “Death is death, the final ending,” he returned flatly. “There is no struggle to be had.”

  Indicating the frozen body upon her back, Zzuriel said, “Due to my curse, I believe as you do. However, I am not certain anymore. I have seen unbelievable things, even today – how did the Shyraiama Dragons rise from in and around the Deepwoods if they died somewhere untold leagues up in Centresky? If Allory exists over there, is this body I carry dead or alive?”

  “She’s an exception.” However, he smiled – a grim slash of a smile upon his handsome face. “I also saw what you saw.”

  A hint of invitation?

  Ashueli said, “Maybe I could try to explain? I believe that life has many manifestations, just as you Dark Elves –”

  “We Dark Elves,” he corrected starchily.

  She flushed in embarrassment. “Sorry. This is … very new to me, Jhoranyal.”

  “Of course. I shall endeavour to respond less harshly in the future,” he returned, inviting her to continue with a gracious twirl of his hand.

  Intriguing. Warrior or diplomat? Both? Certainly, he continued to try very hard and the source of his motivation was not difficult to fathom. She came green-eyed and every ounce as intense as him.

  “We Dark Elves are a manifestation of crystalline life,” Ash continued. “Scintillants are of light, Phoenixes and Dragons are of fire, Zzuriel of a kind of diamond life; the Pixies exist in relation to magical dust and our Purewish Fae friend – well, I don’t know – I guess he’s the stuff wishes and dreams are made of?”

  Fakori turned pinker than ever and spluttered something unintelligible. The Princess coloured as well, muttering an apologetic word.

  Varzune quipped, “Don’t all jump on him at once, ladies!”

  Poor fellow, Fakori did not know where to look.

  Ash said, “All these forms I’ve named are only our primary physical manifestations. As an Elemental, I can move like this.” She vanished into a swirl of smoke and popped up beside her father. “What happened to my physical Elven body as I moved? And if I can disembody and embody at will, or Allory can exist in two places at once, what I think I’m trying to say, Jhoranyal, is that we don’t truly know in which forms a creature may exist up until that moment of final death – including forms that perhaps, as I’ve begun to learn from our experience, may well exist in realms other than our ordinary physical bodies, such as crystal resonance, music, magic, light … I guess what I’d like to argue is that there may be an unknown number of states or transitions before death – if death exists at all?”

  “Hrrr-frrrt, Princess, a most eloquently stated hypothesis,” Yaarah approved.

  Although he glowered at an imaginary point in front of him, the Dark Elf leader said slowly, “Multiple manifestations before a hypothetical final death? I could work with that.”

  Allory sparkle-quivered with inward delight. Jhoranyal was clearly on a campaign to impress Ashueli with his counter-cultural open-mindedness, even if it meant twisting his fundamental beliefs into knots. Clearly, Durc Durhelm had purchased a winner for his daughter – well, his not-daughter – and the Princess was one fortunate girl. Funny old nectar, fate. It could be twistier than a jungle python yet clearer than Middlesun’s own radiance.

  Clearing his throat to draw everyone’s attention, Varzune supplied brightly, “Like working with an existential rash in the underparts, right?”

  Xiximay smacked his shoulder. “You!”

  The Chameleon Fae took his bows to hoots of laughter.