The Fate of Valeane

     The sailors advised Isobel against staying the night. They cited strange rumours about those who did, and even that some did not return from Illmoor at all. The fish, the sailors said, even avoided the seabed around the port. There was something so vile about the place that they could not stand it.

     She was also warned by the locals, and when she stepped onto the quayside, she saw why. There was an ‘Illmoor-look’, and everyone on the island seemed to have it. They were deathly pale, with wide, sunken eyes that had an almost aquatic glassly look to them. There were black marks around the eyes and their hands that seemed to almost crack their skin as if some dark quantity was attempting to escape from below. And the local accent had a curious warbling quality that put people in mind of some of the darker aspects of Maraqua.

     Isobel was not often in the mind to believe in such things as genetic evil, but she could not deny that when she attempted to speak with two of the locals on the pier she had an involuntary sense of repulsion somewhere in the back of her mind that told her something was deeply wrong there.

     The local fishermen were of no help to her. They greeted her in a gruff monosyllabic way that made their distrust of Isobel clear. From there, she ventured further into the town. It appeared to be centred on the town square, which was an ornate but stagnant fountain with green water and awfully hewn gargoyles representing creatures Isobel had not seen before. The square was dominated by a large structure which Isobel took to be the town hall. It, too, was covered in the horrific gargoyles.

     Isobel made her way towards it, conscious of a sort of magical pervasiveness on the edge of her senses that she felt was coming from somewhere just below the fountain in the square. There was something powerful down there, she thought. And it came with a sense of an abject evil presence. A malevolence that Isobel could not pin down. She wondered briefly if this was the same presence the Faeries had felt in the dream. If it was the evil of Bal’Gammaron she was feeling.

     The town hall doors were locked tightly, but Isobel made short work of them. The square was curiously deserted of any locals so a brief blast of magic to force the lock went entirely unnoticed.

     The insides of the place made it clear this was no town hall, but a temple of devotion to some unspeakable beast. There were pews arranged in lines, black candles burning in sconces. All of it seemed focused on a carved idol at the far end of the chamber. Isobel did not recognise the material it was made of, though it seemed to be some kind of blackish-greenish stone. The creature it depicted was a beast of disgusting and unnerving physicality. It was almost crustacean in nature, but with two great leathery wings and a face full of tentacles where its mouth should be. A forked tail and hoofed feet suggested this was a thing that walked the land rather than the seabed, and the entire iconography was covered in depictions of tentacles almost identical to the ones that the Faeries had described as ploughing up the garden in the dreams.

     This left no doubt. This thing was Bal’Gammaron. This was the creature that Valeane was fighting. And, it seemed, these locals worshipped it.

     Isobel at once felt intensely in danger. The standoffish and reclusive nature of the locals now made perfect sense. These people were not cursed, they were in league with the thing.

     An unnatural movement near the door that spoke of a gait considered odd by most standards alerted Isobel to the presence of another. She turned to find another of the pale locals there, a Gelert. This one was dressed in an ornate golden robe that marked him as some sort of priest. Perhaps the closest thing these people had to a leader that was not Bal’Gammaron.

     “Yes!?” the Gelert questioned in his horrible bubbling voice. “What you wanting?”

     The method of speech implied in some awful way to Isobel that he was not used to speaking the words. She wondered what terrible means of communication the islanders must normally use to one another.

     “I am seeking a Faerie,” Isobel said, one hand slowly moving to her belt and the sheathe for her sword. “Known as Valeane.”

     “No Faerie!” the Gelert shot back a little too quickly for Isobel’s liking. “Not here!”

     “Then perhaps you have seen a magical disturbance nearby,” Isobel said. “A kind of portal. A tear in space.”

     “Nothing like that here!”

     There were sounds from somewhere below. Move moment like the strange footsteps of the Gelert. Other locals, using subterranean passages to get about the town. That’s why so few appeared on the surface. Isobel was about to be ambushed, she was sure. She had nothing to lose, so she asked the question.

     “Then perhaps you can tell me about Bal’Gammaron,” she said. “What is he?”

     “You dare use his name?!” the Gelert roared. “The Others are beyond you!”

     There was the sound of a door bursting open somewhere in the back of the temple. Pale locals flooded through, easily thirty with more on the way. Isobel drew her sword in a fluid motion.

     “Where is the portal?” she demanded, turning in a circle to judge the townsfolk who had surrounded her.

     A few of them were betrayed by their senses, glancing out of the door to the fountain in the square. The source of the strange energy Isobel had sensed. The portal must be below it, she was sure.

     The circle was closing in, but Isobel had no time for this. She had what she needed. The portal was found and the defenders of it were revealed. She charged her brief magic and in a flash, she was gone from that horrible place.

     She hoped to never see it again. She knew that hope was in vain.

     ***

     “Their numbers?” Aethia asked, staring down at the table.

     Isobel had arranged a three-dimensional view of Illmoor out of Faerie Dust. The dilapidated buildings shimmered in the purple and pink hues, belying the sinister nature of the town.

     “I cannot be sure on that count,” Isobel answered. “If they are truly using tunnels under the town to navigate, there may be hundreds of them down there. What I can say is that they do not appear well trained. They made no attempt to stop me from using my teleportation spell. And if they were expecting to physically fight me, they came poorly equipped.”

     “Still,” Fyora said from the other end of the table. “In numbers, they may be enough to overwhelm a unit. We cannot afford to take risks here, we must commit the army in full to be sure.”

     Aethia nodded in agreement.

     “We don’t know for sure their capabilities,” she said. “There’s no telling what dark abilities they may have been granted.”

     “The townsfolk are a distraction regardless,” Isobel said. “Our focus should be the fountain, and gaining access to the portal below it.”

     Aethia nodded again.

     “My efforts with the Museum in Neopia Central confirm this,” the Battle Faerie added. “If Bal’Gammaron manages to make it through the portal, it is already over.”

     “Then closing it must be our absolute priority,” Isobel said.

     “And rescuing Valeane,” Aethia added.

     Isobel looked from Aethia to Fyora and cleared her throat.

     “I mean this with my most absolute respect, but we must consider the possibility that Valeane cannot be saved,” she said. “If she is standing in the breach and is the only thing keeping Bal’Gammaron at bay, then bringing her back may release him. If we are faced with the choice of saving Valeane and sealing the portal, we must choose to seal the portal. I realise there is a personal connection with Valeane to you both, but we must be pragmatic about it.”

     “Valeane must be saved,” Aethia protested. “We owe her that much.”

     “Isobel is right,” Fyora said firmly. “Though it pains me to admit it. If Valeane’s salvation comes at the cost of Neopia’s survival, it is not a price we should pay. It is not a price she would be willing to pay either.”

     Aethia clearly did not agree but she didn’t question her Queen.

     “On that note, closing the portal. How?” Isobel asked.

     “Semperia has pledged her support,” Fyora said. “If we find the portal, she will come. And I believe with her help we should be able to close it.”

     “And if she cannot?” Aethia asked.

     “Then we must give Valeane whatever aid we can to push the beast back into whatever realm he is emerging from,” Fyora answered.

     Isobel waved her hand over the Faerie Dust city and it changed form into the visage of the terrible beast she had seen in the carvings of the temple. To the form of Bal’Gammaron.

     “We can assume the carving wasn’t to scale,” Isobel said.

     “Drevni was the size of Faerie City,” Fyora confirmed. “I cannot imagine this will be any different.”

     “Then if all else fails we enter the breach and face this beast as one,” Aethia said with a firm nod.

     Isobel stared at the terrible glittering creature on the table. She dearly hoped it would not come to that.

      To be continued…