Editor’s Note: This is the second chapter of Ben’s creative story A Conciliatory Fall. If you missed the beginning, check it out under Ben’s staff profile or in the A&E section.

For the citizens of Wraeclast to look up at the ailing night sky and see only only a bright freefalling inferno of flesh, bone and feather would not, and should not be emblazoned as fools. It is in the nature of the mortal coil to see only what it can comprehend, to ignore the cosmic truth before them and see nothing but simple triviality in the falling form. Even as their souls separate from their corporeal forms and fall to lay in my attenuated arms, the meaning and grandeur of the space and universe around them still holds the gaze of an infant opening its eyes for the first time. Some looking at the falling light may see it as simply just a falling star, streaking across the sky in all its sparkling glamour. Some see it for what it is easily seen as; a falling form piercing through the permeable atmosphere and crashing towards the city’s streets. Men like Joseph even see themselves in the figure, the body and flailing limbs, even from great distances, appearing Faeish to the eyes, its humanoid form shielded from the engulfing flames by angelic wings.

As I have said before, it would be as pointless to chastise the frightened and enfeebled souls looking upon the falling figure and not understanding the truth, as it would be to chastise a dog for not understanding the reason for its masters sadness, or that it’s reflection in the mirror is simply just that. While it can be frustrating to deal with such a degree of ineptitude, the master will still always smile at the dog’s attempt to understand the world around it. For, would it not be idiotic to yell at a dog for not knowing how to speak?

For this very reason let’s look at the falling form as the Fae of Wraeclast see it in their attempt to understand, instead of chastising them on what would be ultimately unimportant and near impossible to see, let’s instead look at what they should see. Above the falling form, one of their right mind would only see the black void of the night sky, peaceful and unmoving. If one was to only look closer, force the rational thoughts in their head to the wayside and see with the eyes of the mad or the wise, they would see the quivering swath of shadowy, root like tendrils plummeting after the falling form. It’s undefined mass of flailing limbs stretched and twisted as it seems to consume the very sky. The indescribable chaos besieging one’s eyes is only brought to focus by the worn marble mask and ragged cloth cloak billoing from behind the creature that led its descent. The face hidden in the cracked ornate mask kept its eyeless sockets locked onto the falling girl’s face, attempting to meet her gaze. Black tears streamed out of the sockets, streaming like blood down its face as it watched the Girl hide her eyes beneath her arms, who had begun sobbing softly at the frightening sight of the creature. The shadowy beast began its screech, one that seemingly sent shockwaves through the very air with its power.  It could be compared to the screech of an animal upon finding her brood butchered, the blood of her children around her feet, the guts and viscera laid about to create a gruesome sculpture for the mother’s eyes. Nothing else could be used to describe such a scream, one of pure agony, writhing anger and a consuming wish for revenge. The creature’s movements become more erratic, twisting and writhing ever violently downward, attempting to catch the falling girl. More of the shadowy tendrils stretched forward, spreading like roots to catch and wrap around the comparatively tiny form.

The fall of the girl seemed to anger the very air, flames shooting around her that with her wings would flay the flesh from her bones and turn her to Ash. Even  to an observer it was obvious that while slowly, the now blackened feathers were being eaten away like sparks fizzling  from a roaring fire, her shield against the light soon to be nothing more than bone. The woman remained curled as though she were a infant, her body racked with terrified shivers as she attempted to avert her eyes from the sight above. She was desperate to purge her mind of the rattling screech and its cold, blackened eyes and stoic face of painted stone. The creatures screech of frustration in response to being ignored increased in volume, grating against the girl’s ears until it ricocheted inside her mind, causing a numbing headache that seemed to turn her skull to churned paste. The girl just wanted the sound to stop, the sound consuming her senses and filling her thoughts. Her  increasing panic was only heightened by the sense of the tendrils touching her. It was the same as the sensation of an invisible insect crawling against the skin, the paranoia making every itch a stinging bite. She wanted to scream, fight, cry and puke all at once as she was driven mad by the sensation that at any moment the next sensation of the creeping tentacles gripping her could be all too real.

She knew it was getting closer, that it wanted her to meet its gaze, the thing’s body was unfazed by the flames as it plummeted towards her with increasing speed. The last strips of her wings burned away, now only massive lengths of thin, charred bone remaining, leaving her body to begin to bubble and blister from the heat. Through her sobbing, this new sensation of pain seemingly inspired a moment of what could be considered courage, a burning wish for the constricting, crushing sensation of terror and the endless screech to cease. Even through her sobbing she tensed, gritting her teeth before lashing out like a wild animal towards the shadow, staring with all the childish fury and defiance she could muster, driving it forward as a spear into the creature’s eyes.

The girl paused for but a moment, taken aback by the change in her perception of the creature. Her body still remained tensed in preparation for a fight, but her face now lost the fear it had once had. The creature no longer appeared like a writhing mass of anger and revenge, but instead its cry took on a different sound. It was the screech of relieved sorrow, of terrified joy, no longer a sound that seemed threatening to the girl. The concern in its voice was soothing, comforting the girl as though it were the soft lullaby of a loving mother. The girl’s body untensed; fear had left her mind in a flood of relief. She no longer attempted to fight the thing above her, as even when the tendrils wrapped around the girl’s back, dripping with a viscous reddish black fluid, the girl did not recoil away. The girl could not explain the sudden trust she felt in this creature as it brought her into its embrace, drawing her slowly to its bosom as though it were shielding a infant. The touch of the creature seemed to numb the searing pain from the burns across her shoulders, and soon the girl curled up once more and closed her eyes once again, though no longer for fear.

Of course, to experience such a feeling of safety cannot last forever, as it is against the nature of life. For most, they only experience this feeling of true, blissful safety twice in one’s life: the beginning; and the end. The babe knows not of pain, not of cold, not of life, not of death, not of want, not of greed, it only knows the blanketing warmth, and connection to its mother. Some would ponder how terrifying an experience to suddenly be ripped from the security of the womb, dragged kicking and screaming onto a cold ground, surrounded by immense giants staring down and gripping the child as with a flick of the wrist and a flash of metal, the cord is cut, severing the babe from its mother. The babe, with no other knowledge than the security and love of the womb now has to walk on its own, learn to talk on its own, learn to think, learn to want, learn to hate, learn to bite its tongue and endure the pains and stresses of life with only a scarred navel to remember the peace and happiness it had once enjoyed. The babe will try to find another, someone to fill the void of love to even compare to that of what they once experienced. In this fruitless exercise to experience the high they had once felt as though it were a drug, they become angry, and the one good in the world is tainted by heartbreak that breaks the person again, and again. The babe loses its youth, growing old and feeble, life having amounted to nothing more than a war of attrition to walk another day. It’s a testament to the spirit of creatures such as this that it does walk another day, and not fling itself from the highest of ledges.

For the girl, her birth was not like this in process, but in thought similar. For her, it was a fall, a embrace, a stabbing pain, and a impact with the cold stone streets of Wraeclast.

Even from the best of perspectives, it’s impossible to know if the creature truly did as it intended and shielded the girl as much it could from the ground, or if it could only feebly pierce the skin of her back before releasing her to her fate. Either way, upon impact with the ground, in a spray of soot, dust and rock the creature vanished. No matter what is told in stories, a impact of something of even the largest of living creatures at peak velocity would not create an explosive crater with its velocity. In many ways the reality is more pitiful. Only a few cracked stones, a miasma of dust and the crunching of bone as the girl’s shoulder shatters on impact, the force of impact rebounding and launching her limp form through the air several yards. Upon landing again, her head now sharing the impact as her body, she skids rapidly across the ground, the coarse gravel and stone ripping the flesh from her arm until only the shattered bone was visible.

The sight was like that of a novel’s cover, an angelic being with tattered wings lying in a pool of black tinted blood, desecrate dark buildings surrounding her, the burned down skeletons appearing as great demonic beasts if looked on with nothing but a passing glance. It had been almost an hour after Joseph’s meeting before the girl’s limp body twitched back to consciousness. The pain reached her before her eyes could even gaze upon this new world, her body shuddering and curling around her shattered arm as she let out an ear-wrenching scream of agony, continuing for what seemed an eternity until her lungs were empty, her throat burning in exertion. Frustrated and defeating, in a last attempt to seemingly keep fighting, her scream turned to sobs that caused her very body to wretch with each breath.

Time passed at a standstill, the crying continuing until she could no longer produce another tear, turning to her body being racked with dry, heaving sobs, and eventually cold silence as she lay motionless on the ground, staring into a enshrouded alley. Her head was clouded, every thought concentrated on the pain that had taken over her body. After a feeling of an eternity passed, she gained the courage to attempt to sit up. Her uninjured arm slowly pried itself free of her tattered shoulder that she laid upon, the hand sticking from the dried blood as though it were a vile glue. The pain on her face was evident, her eyes squeezing shut as her teeth gritted together as the hand ripped away, every bit of her mental fortitude. She was dedicated to not breaking back down into pained cries of agony. Once free, her hand acted as her eyes in this alien world of dark shadows, tracing the rocky ground beneath her before finding a particularly large stone. Her stained hand gripped the rock as she pushed with her all her strength to pull her body up, the process slow as her breath came out in short, rapid bursts of exertion. The rock suddenly came loose, sliding in her hand far to the right and leaving her body to collapse onto her injured shoulder. She screamed in frustration, slamming the ground with her fist before gripping the ground once again and pushing her body upward.

She dragged her legs forward, grating against the ground before finding a comfortable position to sit. She allowed herself to catch her breath as her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, observing the strange structures of wood and stone. Her face twisted into a gaze of wonder, the look of a child’s amazement upon seeing the wonders of the world as though it were a new discovery. Truthfully, the houses around her were barbaric even by primitive standards. They were hastily constructed two story ramshackles of houses designed for the need to efficiently store the poor workforce in as little space as possible, nailed together with sheets of lumber designed to be mass produced. Many of the walls weren’t even properly built with insulation, but rather with straw stuffed into these holes by its denizens to keep out Jitain’s harsh winter storms. The lucky ones had bases of stones to hold up the crescent shaped roofs above the denizens heads. Most had harshly packed earth that required almost constant maintenance to keep the walls standing. The girl, still, had never seen such structures, and thus these faults were lost upon her unknowing eyes. Her panning gaze snapped to a creeping movement just outside of her vision. Upon seeing her gaze upon it, the figure peering around a partially open door darted its head back into the building behind her. After a brief pause, a large hand shakily grasped the edge of the door, the deformed, skeletal hand dug  its long  black talons into the wood. The girl waited with a held breath, a mixture of curiosity and anxious dread keeping her wide, unblinking eyes locked in anticipation for what would be connected to that deformed, elongated hand.  

The creature that peered around the door was vile even by my palate: first appeared its snout; stretched skin clearly not designed to be pulled so far forward clung to its canine jaws like tattered tapestry. The bones of the nose were fully exposed, yellowish in color and  torn from their fleshy coil at the snout, bathed in dried blood. The upper snout could be classified as that of a bear, rows of thick, bone crushing canines designed to grip their prey and draw them into the back of the jaw, a collection of humanoid molars to grind bone and flesh alike. The lower jaw, or more accurately jaws, are not as simple to place. Upon first glance it looked as though it were injured, two elongated jaws clearly once connected now split at the connecting tip, loose tatters of skin bursting with a seemingly unending stream of blackish blood that poured from the mangled jaws. No tissue laced them together at the base or neck, as though stripped away in some cruel torture. However, the jaws were not disabled, moving as though they were the mandible of a insect, swinging on a joint that acted as a lever to allow all three jaws to open wide, and snap shut all at once to bring down the force of nearly fifty bone crushing canines. The creature’s jaws were not open in such a threatening manner, ajar only enough to let a long pinkish tongue slither outward as though tasting the air. Slowly, its head fully materialized itself, its large skull nearly three times as large as that of a human’s and a bastard child of a dog and a Fae for the skull. The elongated ridge of a canine that housed the many muscles for the creature’s jaws rounded out near the base of the neck in a more humanoid fashion. The eyes were cast inside large, round sockets, the eyes shrunk back inside the head slightly as though they were designed for a much smaller head. They were orbs, like those of the Fae, designed like those of crustaceans and insects to pick up a large array of light and even to change color to show their mood. This creature’s eyes however, were as black as oil, the color changing only when a thin yellow screen of flesh swept across the eye to blink.

The face was by all means every culture’s worst imaging of a monster brought to life, a wolf man, an alien, a blood soaked vampire, an inhabitant of uncanny valley, the blood caked, stretched skin torn like wet paper being pulled apart, the stuff of a psychedelic drug trip. For these reasons alone, what the girl did next caused me to pause my stride and simply stare in absolute confusion and amazement. Even after all this time, in all the death that plagued that city that left me the heaviest of burdens, the thing I still ponder on in wonder is one simple act the girl did, one motion that has left me at a loss for her reasons. This act was as simple as a smile, and a hand outstretched towards the creature as though wishing for it to take it.

Even knowing what she would become, this act still holds to question how someone with the naivety and mind of a child could look upon a horror such as this and look upon it with a friendly gaze. Even the kindest or most foolish of those would only perform such an act with the greatest of caution and look of fear hidden behind their eyes. This made it all the stranger that I saw none of this, no hesitation, no quivering of the lip, no brief look of concern, not even the breaking of a sweat across her pale brow. It is the nature of mortals and even gods to fear the dark, to recoil in disgust and terror at what they do not understand. Most seek to destroy, to take no chances with anything that causes them such a troubling fright, or simply to run screaming from it. “How does she defy such a staple of the conscious mind?” I had pondered aloud, though of course no one could hear me. Well, no one living in Wraeclast that is, I was apparently not alone in this, as the creature looked just as confused, its head swinging backward as though expecting an attack. The creature, after a brief moment, kept its eyes locked on the girl’s as it cautiously stepped into the pale moonlight of the city street. The creature only got more horrifying to anyone of mortal hailing, its eight foot form an emaciated skeleton covered by the same stretched skin and muscle that plagued its head. Blackish, infected veins were made all too prevalent by the hollowed ribs that stuck out several inches above its belly. It looked starved, a bolemiac born of monstrous flesh. Adding to its enfeeblement was the way it wrapped its arm around itself and hunched over as it walked, shaking from a mixture of the remnants of the winter chill and the obvious exhaustion. Even still, the girl’s look only changed to a look of concern, the look of a concerned friend finding you in a state of despair. The foolishness of this crossed her mind, as she showed more concern for the creature’s appearance than she did the blood streaming from a gash upon her head or her shattered arm.

The beast stepped with a cautious stride, its eyes darting in every direction, sniffing the air in as if expecting a trap. The creature’s talons clicked across the stone pavement, before it stopped barely 5 paces from where the girl sat. It crouched on all fours, staring at the girl with a fearful anticipation. She moved her hand slightly upward towards the creature, causing it to spring back from the sudden movement. The girl looked at her hand in a look of confusion, before looking back at the creature and smiling once more. The beast’s tension eased, even as the girl raised her hand once more, the beast did not flinch. Slowly, one of the arms cradling its emaciated chest shakily pried away in a movement that seemed almost like stone coming to life. The arm, now in full view a terrifying display of weaponry; despite the arm’s thin long length, nearly five feet in length, was clearly rippled with muscle, the talon endings on each of its fingers resonated a aura of power, even with its sickly appearance. In its hand it clutched a brooch meant to hold a cloak together, a crescent piece of wood carved into the shape of a moon, a rough but well crafted shield in its center. He brought it to her palm, dropping it swiftly into her outstretched hand before it pulled back its hand to clutch its chest once more, watching for her reaction.

The girl’s smile widened, letting out a cheery laugh while inspecting the brooch,  confused by what it was but obviously touched by the gift. The darkened eyes of the creature lit up with joy for but a brief moment, before the black orbs swirled with a reflection of orange light. The creature let out a terrified screech, whimpering as it swiftly sat up and began to back up. It looked at the girl once more, a look of betrayal and anger in its posture as it let out a weak, whispy growl before darting back into the dark house, escaping the prying light.

The second part that amazed me about this girl was that while she could smile in the face of darkness, the face of what most would consider unholy, she showed no fear, but the scrying eye of torchlight behind her placed an indescribable look of horror upon her face. She barely had time to ponder the beast’s sudden strange aggression as she clumsily turned to face the source of the light. Voices filled the night air, though the words’ meaning fell on unknowing ears.  The houses were now illuminated by a great blaze of light, sending shadows darting across the wall that seemed to reach out for her, a drum of what sounded like a hundred footsteps bearing down on her. She kept turning, each inch gained sending shooting pain up her arm as the voices grew louder, the footsteps increasing in frequency. They were on top of her, she seemed certain of it. Her mouth opened to let out a cry of terror, but found her voice lost to the sympathy of the light.

As she finally gazed upon the source of the light. Her eyes widened, locked on a figure who stood like a man, but was not made of flesh. The white masked face, body enshrouded in a cloth cloak sighed deeply, a pyre behind him of light burned the flesh from a hung beast as it was drawn forward by darkened figures. The body blistered from the flames, the eyes melted into a fleshy wax dripping from its skull, its flesh flayed ready, its bones blacked, blisters bursting from the heat, creating a sickening popping sound. Tears filled the girl’s eye, the sight churning her stomach. She finally looked away, staring at the ground as her body began a cold sweat. She slowly looked back up at the man, who had began to walk forward once again.

He looked down at her from several yards away, a deep chuckle escaping from his throat. From his belt came unsheathed an axe, glinting as it reflected the light from the grotesque display behind him, before saying in a muffled voice that came out as a sharp whisper “There you are. You don’t know how long we’ve been looking for you.”