Allory Fae and the Dragon's Whiskers

GLANCING ABOUT IN EVERY direction as she collected her wits like stray streamers of scintillance, Allory saw several dozen Quellsteel Pixies falling into formation around and behind Zzuriel as if they played honour-guard to royalty. A sliver of time later, she realised that there was good reason, for a darkening cloud of octopus-creatures closed in upon them from her left, from below, from above.

Tens of thousands! Her elemental sap froze.

"ALLORY FAE, THIS WAY!" Sabline bellowed, gesturing with her wing in tandem with Asheuli's wild arm-waving atop her shoulders.

Already, dark Pixies clashed with legions of octopi, cutting, tearing, bellowing, dying.

She had to fight. No, escape!

No, fight!

Before she knew it, Allory felt that weird gravitational heaviness … leave her body? The weird concentration of force peeled away with peculiar reluctance, seeming to pull everything down with it like water suddenly draining from a pond, yet not quite as she expected. The Quellsteel Pixies acted as if reenergised, their sable-dust-empowered blows suddenly landing with double, triple the force. Where in mortal struggle, wings and limbs locked with tentacles in deadly battles, they turned into a one-sided slaughter. Better yet, the Kera-du-Kerakarool slowed as if forced to swim through gelid sap. Its thundering outrage boomed off the roof – whatever magical substance this almighty chamber was made of – as its tentacles sagged, its body slumped and even the crimson blood appeared to drain toward the base of its baleful eyes, giving them an eerily sleepless, saggy-bagged appearance.

"WHO DARES?" the behemoth raged.

By way of reply, Julfyria slapped it across the chops with a pawful of talons as tall as tree-trunks, sending blubbery bits of flesh spraying away from the impact.

A fearsomely worthy ploy, Allory Life-Weaver! panted a Pixie, somehow managing to collect most of the important bits of her against his chest as they shot away. Let us make good our escape.

Nay, our tactical withdrawal, cried another Pixie in passing.

They hurtled after a glimmer of gold.

Guess Yaarah's natural gleam came in handy to provide directions in dark places, Allory chuckled to herself, still struggling to process what she had seen. Had her little misadventure helped Julfyria? Yes, it had. The two titans fell slowly into the depths – or was it her rising that created a visual illusion – with the white Dragoness through dozens of repeated blows, carving a substantial canyon into the Kera-du-Kerakarool's neck region. Would she decapitate the behemoth? Was it even possible?

That was the last she saw of them as their course took them up through another layer of floating bubble-plants and the exuberant vegetation closed like a veil over the scene.

Unlike the Dark Elves, the Pixies seemed to have no trouble travelling through this negligible gravity. In a river of azure-dusted darkness, they poured upward through the cavern, appearing to sweep along a few colourful leaves upon its turbulent surface. The upward flight was longer than she had imagined. Twice, they heard faraway roaring as the behemoths presumably exchanged compliments. The sound reverberated like thunder. Then, she suddenly saw stone – and realised belatedly, it was not stone but – her ears suddenly pricked up at the sound of nearby conversation.

Structural quellsteel, Immorandixi explained to Yaarah, adding a string of letters and numbers that presumably added up to a Felidragon's sage nodding. The verimost foundation of the arcship of our world; or, as we would style it, the backbone of Spheris.

Not that Spheris is in any way spiny or bony, nrrr-hssst, the Golden Purrmaine added pedantically.

Merely a useful metaphor.

Indeed.

Allory grinned to herself. Sweet scholars. They'd be swapping favourite scroll recommendations any wingbeat now.

It seemed they must have fallen deeper into the shell of the world than she had imagined, because it was a good two hours' flying time by her estimation – supported by a certain feline of perfect whiskers – before she finally sighted the first tunnel-hole in the cavern roof. At once, a dozen squads of Pixies broke away from the main body and made for other exit holes she could just about pick out – belatedly – in the distance.

She began to ask, "Yaarah –"

"They're sealing the other nearby exits," he explained. "There are some forty-three exits located in this region alone. Julfyria ordered it. She means to …" He nodded his muzzle slowly, and left the rest unspoken. "We shall seal this one behind us, mrrr-frrr – what sayeth Her Sparkliness?"

"Twinkle, twinkle?" Allory giggled, but with little mirth.

O Julfyria, may your sacrifice not be in vain.

"Twinkle, twinkle, come what may, we shall live to fight another day," he grinned unexpectedly. "Allory Fae, the Kera-du-Kerakarool brings the power and mass of oceans with it. This too will destabilise our world. The Quellsteel Pixies are deeply concerned about what they call tidal forces, which is a feature of a branch of science they call planetary physics."

"Roughly the size of your brain, then," Varzune chirped from nearby.

Yaarah purred, "Surely no such application of hyperbole can even begin to approach the magnitude of my intellect, thank you, Varzune Fae. Most kind of you to toss a pawful of falsehoods into our otherwise scholarly conversation. Aye. The discussion made for disquieting news. This plan of the Wraith's may be far longer in the tooth than any creature has hitherto dared to conjecture, for such contemplations quell the very fires of a Dragon – yet I wonder if these troubles are confined only to our small locality in this unimaginably vast world, or if all creatures suffer as we do, or worse –"

"There's a worse?" the Chameleon Fae coughed in disbelief.

All around, Allory saw her companions listening closely as Yaarah's logic slowly circled toward a conclusion perhaps only he had considered.

Beneath her hands and toes, twined in his lush fur, she felt his body shiver.

He said, "Trying, as it were, to place oneself in the shadow of this Wraith, thus to define the grand sweep of its master plan – a plan which this Felidragon can only hope is far less advanced than he fears – and taking into account this new intelligence I have received from the Quellsteel Pixies and deduced from the foe's advent, frrr-hsst! May it never come to pass!" He spat aside. "I wonder if Ahm-Shira is not the last bastion of hope –"

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"Of hope?" she echoed helplessly.

Yaarah's eyes squeezed shut as they approached the dark tunnel mouth.

"The last bastion of sentient creatures in all of Spheris."

* * * *

Poor Yaarah! Immediately after his devastating announcement, delivered with quivering lip and never more drooping whiskers, he had broken down and wept like a desolate kitten. She had never known him to weep like this, inconsolable. The shocked, confused, dismayed babble his words had triggered faded before this outpouring of his grief, as if he personally knew the full weight of each and every soul the boneyard had ever held.

It soured the very sap of her bones.

Sabline seemed openly taken aback but she withheld any censure.

No, this scholar had never been a creature of many hot airs, despite an avowed love of hearing his own voice. What comfort could she even offer? The world grew dark. Oddly, the fear that stood foremost in her mind was 'what if we never laugh again?' For if there had been no Scintillant laughter and sparkle, would Spheris as they knew it even exist? Perhaps she thought too much of her kind. Ehlshinoi must have had resources beyond her imagination. Yet still, she wondered.

Must any Traveller not marvel at the trajectory of fate? Not shiver in fear? For Spheris was unimaginably vast and its life-forms and places must surely beggar any attempt at imagination, but the Wraith was implacable, its designs honed and implemented over untold aeons.

Must hope also erode over aeons, to perish here at the crux of the Wraith's grand design?

Must all the life-threads of living creatures draw together in one final, ultimate knot, from which no future thread could possibly escape?

Her eyes remained soft upon the Felidragon as the dark stream of Pixies compressed, carrying them up into one of the dark steel holes. Quellsteel shone like the Pixies themselves, a blackness that was somehow matte yet gleaming, brimming with all the restless, life-giving power of ariavanae. Its radiance was nothing to do with reflection and everything to do with its innate properties – a phenomenon which Yaarah had touched upon before.

Now, to the endless flight –

Endless

The flight home

End merges into beginning

Infinity intertwined

Unending.

The poem sprang into her mind fully-formed, requiring no forethought. Pre-existent? A thought from another Allory from another time, or were all these echoes eventually but one? Was she but one person, a traveller caught in a loop of time – more a hopeless snarl, she supposed – or did her purpose, her destiny, have a particular direction?

Did it even matter?

Would it, in so much as one iota, change her determination to do what was right?

For it struck her that if her fate as the Scintarinnae was to be the one in whom all threads came to their ultimate end – well, suggids! Was this the end? What lay beyond the boneyard? What future for the souls trapped there?

Pixie wings by the tens of thousands brushed through the tunnel, creating a sound not unlike the rushing of a storm through jungle treetops. Allory found it reassuring. That was the kind of sound that used to accompany her to sleep in the cocoon those many, many nights she had slept together with her pupae-siblings in the heart of their community. How small it seemed now, in her memory. What a tiny place from which an Allory Fae should arise. Did legends truly spring from such ordinariness?

A little behind her, the Pixies discussed how deeply to backfill the tunnel entrance. Many voices were against, citing how strong the pressure already was and how the balance of Spheris required relief mechanisms. The movement of whole oceans was no trivial matter.

As they flew upward through the tunnel, riding what she belatedly realised was a breeze swiftly strengthening into a gale-force wind, she glanced about and found Hansanori's eyes ardent upon her. He must be thinking upon their kiss. While the moment had been delicious and unexpected and wholly beautiful, Allory found her heart sinking into melancholy. One question dominated all.

For how long?

They flew upward into a world embroiled in chaos and strife.

How bad is it up there? How can we hope to stand against the Wraith and its ghastly schemes?

Questions with no answers.

Questions to make nectar-soup of any hope she might claim.

Only, this was her world and, at a fundamental level, she believed that the Wraith had no place here, no reason to attack their Middlesun and no right to torture souls in perpetuity. Could she save all? Could she save any? The sadness she felt as she considered her inadequacy in the face of it all was greater even than the gravity with which she had pulled down a Giant.

Turning, she said to the Prince, "Where is hope to be found?"

He blinked several times. "Hope? Where is hope to be found? In … in never giving up, Allory Fae. In truth, I am a poor candidate to attempt any kind of answer to such a question. For so long, I knew no hope and then I found it in you, not in myself. Mine had to come from another source."

"A web of frailty?" she whispered.

"I – I suppose so. Yet its strands are stronger than you might think. The threads of our combined purpose elevate us beyond what we could ever, alone, hope to be."

"So I would … wish to think."

Unexpectedly, Jhoranyal hissed, "Hope in ourselves and our own strength has little value. It must be rooted in that which is greater, higher and better; in the hope that there can be a tomorrow without the threat of eternal peril. By this I mean, without the Wraith perverting the honourable cessation of existence to which our souls are promised from their very first spark –" suddenly, his voice rose into a shout "– for death is no longer death. It is torment, and that is anathema!"

In the corner of her eye, Allory saw Yaarah's whiskers quiver in what must signify an inner reaction to the Dark Elf's fatalistic view on death. However, before he could respond, Sabline growled:

"Hope is a pointless indulgence. Feelings are untrustworthy. What you have, Allory Fae, is courage. No, not the sparkly growl. I reject it!" Grinning to show her exceptional fangs to their best advantage, she purred, "Tell her, Yaarah. Tell her about courage. You are a scholar of many beautiful words."

"Mrrr-frrr, she's right, Allory," Yaarah purred at once. "Remember the Ripper Baboons? I remember you brandishing a little dagger about yea long –" he raised a paw to illustrate "– as you faced a pack of ravenous hunters each many times bigger than you, and you cried, 'Come on! What're you waiting for?' You defied them, saying, 'Let's play. Come on! Finish it!' There, in that cenote, that underground cave, you gave them pause. That's what I picture when I think of courage."

"Eep?"

All around, her friends nodded.

"I'm quite certain my voice sounded much wobblier and far less definite at the time," she pointed out quite rightly.

Yaarah snort-hissed, "As Sabline said, zrrr-prrt, rejected!"

The Felidragons exchanged a wingtip-caress.

Xiximay said, "We Phoenix Fae say that hope burns eternal. Yaarah may call that a cliché, and I suppose it is, but this image is especially apt in our culture. A phoenix lives on beyond what seems to be the final conflagration, the consumption and end of everything – I'm not explaining it very well. Ah, let me put it this way. Even when there seems to be no life nor any hope of a rebirth, the life of a Phoenix's fire lives on and it is a certainty that it will be rekindled. It is a mystery how."

"Requires investigation," Varzune put in, dropping a peck upon her cheek. "Xiximay, you're making entire jungles of sense. Carry right on."

"So, what do you think, Varzune?" she challenged.

"I'm no philosopher."

Hansanori chimed in, "It's worth a kiss – two kisses!"

Xiximay levelled a filthy glare at him, her hair smouldering visibly. Wisely, the Prince backed up a wing-length or two, just in case.

"You're very much about the kisses recently," Ash observed slyly.

The Prince turned silvery-pink as he spluttered, "I have … good reason?"

"I am instantly inspired!" Varzune agreed. "Rather predictably."

Hansanori snorted as the joke landed square between his antennae. "Fine. Be right. What say you about hope, friend?"

Grinning about him in his usual insouciant way, the Chameleon replied, "Well, I don't have any fancy speech prepared, so I guess I'll just say this: hope is the choice we make when there is no other choice. We choose hope because without it, life and the future and pretty much everything would be unbearable. I mean, it's illogical. Unreasonable. Even insane, arguably …"

Frowning to himself, he fell silent, but when Xiximay pinched his arm gently, he added, "I choose hope because it's the only way I see that maybe, just maybe, we could do the impossible. I refuse to give in to despair. If my days are soon to end, then I will choose to live them to the fullest – I will fight beyond the ends of my strength, love outrageously and deny despair from taking any root. I will crack all the bad jokes I can whenever I can because maybe, just maybe, that's how I will annoy and frustrate the Wraith into making a fatal mistake and that would please me immensely. And here ends the lesson of the Jokerbro. Is that worth a reward?"

Xiximay thought so. She rewarded him into complete befuddlement, and that forced Zzuriel to swoop lest their rising passion end up in chargrilled Jokerbro.