Free Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale by A. L. Brooks Page A

the sight Gargaron rode on with haste through Toadstool
farms, where toadstools stood taller than even he. Gigantic looming
fungal plants they were with immense canopies of purple and green.
He looked up as his destrier trotted beneath them, their undersides
lined with bumpy blue ribs. Gargaron wondered if toad worms still
lived inside them, wriggling their shining blue bellies around the
moist dark beds of toadstool flesh. The folk of this region farmed
the nectar produced by those fat stinking worms. The most powerful
aphrodisiac called Elluur it were and it fetched grand prices in
the cities of Seagarrd and Ingarra.
    He were half tempted to call out
as he passed by farmsteads. To see if any folk still lived, to see
who might respond. All farms hereabouts seemed far too quiet he
felt. But he stayed his mouth for fear of alerting any of those
peculiar Dark Ones, the sort of which he had spied howling about in
morning’s deluge. Ultimately, the fate of these farmers lay about
him in plain sight. Some lay stinking, gathering flies and grass
crabs on their porches. Others lay in their fields, their lips and
eyelids already pecked off and eaten.
    He knew then he had not yet freed
himself entirely of this accursed death zone.

    2
    On Autumn’s outskirts, where the
view of Skytower stood ever prominent, Far Trail curved north and
away toward the distant frontier post of Cidertown. Here Gargaron
took the branching regional road for Autumn. Yet his hopes that he
might have finally reached the outer fringe of his death zone soon
looked dashed. For even here he should have come across signs of
commerce, of road side stalls, cheap Inns, seedy brothels. But the
living had deserted the roadway. Only the dead populated it now. As
they did, he discovered, all the way to the centre of Autumn.
Menfolk, womenfolk, children of countless numbers of species. Big
and small. Rich, poor. No distinction, no discrimination. All equal
now in death, all perished, all decaying. Some only half eaten,
some mostly eaten, some torn from their shawls and dresses and
breeches by greeps, mankks, skorks and every other known crawling,
wriggling, slithering scavenger and carrion muncher that dwelt in
sewers and drains and ditches on the outskirts of these larger
towns.
    In some of the waterways he saw dead folk
floating, black gutfish busy feasting upon them.
    The stench in the air barraged
him, as if invisible ghosts thrusted it upon him, determined to
turn him away, this living encroacher trespassing upon their newly
established land of dead. He fetched his lavender cloth from his
pack, dabbed it in fresh lavender oil, and tied it around his nose
and mouth. Instead of raw stench of dead now, he could smell raw
stench of dead over-laced with sweet musk of lavender. He were not
certain the compromise were worth the effort.
    Still, he pressed
on, trying his best to ignore the reek. Perhaps beyond Autumn, there lies the edge to this death
zone. It were an optimistic forecast at
best. But a new notion came to him: What
say Autumn be its epicentre?
    This revelation made him pull
Grimah to a halt. Did this make sense? he wondered. Nothing had
survived in Hovel. And little else had survived anywhere else that
he had seen except for this end of the Steppe. If Autumn proved its
epicentre then would it not stand to reason to find everything here
perished? This were not the case as Gargaron had witnessed.
Swimming gutfish, crawling greeps, slithering mankks, scrambling
skorks, all alive and by all appearances thriving.
    He had no explanation. None of it made
sense.
    He cast his eyes across the
settlement to the Skysight Tower that dominated the townscape where
it loomed far into the heavens like a tall untouched pinnacle. He
felt it watched him in return somehow, watched him with quiet
suspicion, how he, the realm’s wandering survivor, standing there
oh so conspicuous, still stood, still walked, while every other
sentient soul rotted in the streets.
    If this death
zone