Dead Zenith

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The Red Griffon yelped. Lusik's scream shattered her dreamy fog and she scrambled about gasping. Trapped. A singular feeling. All other thoughts eluded her, lanterns hitched to poles loomed over them like halberds. Her head snapped around as Lusik scampered next to her, the musky darkness lightened as if in response to her view and their chasers were revealed – she cried out as their faces unshrouded. Fangs protruded from their muzzles. Like Lusik's. But these were bared in blood and a grave deadlight was in their centre of their pupils. Claws unsheathed. Before there were ten, now only there was seven. Two her hex had assailed, one laid beside her cowering. Their collective rage radiated like a blaring star and the companions' animal instincts twanged their senses and implored them to gallop away into the dark. Lusik was paralysed. The Red Griffon had no escape.

Their claws never dove forward to rend her. They stood. Stalwart specters unmoved by the cold and only stared. She felt naked and accursed. Their eyes tracing all over her, she could feel their disgusted gazes, the gauzes wrapped around her body, the scars, the distinctive lack of a tail. A message bounced between them. She dared no move, consigned to her fate a deep dread settled over her, an ethereal depression that one feels right before the guillotine blade is dropped onto their neck.

A deep voice came from a brother. Higher than Lusik's but leagues sterner. 'Release our brother.' He said. 'Or I die, to destroy you.'

She didn't reply, startled and terrified. He stepped forward. 'Wait now!' Said the Griffon, 'I-I. Don't understand.'

'Release. Him.' The drake commanded. As if telling a dog to drop the cat between its jaws.

'Please.' She begged. Again, humility left her. 'Please. Don't. Please.' Tears welled up.

Lusik saw her terrified face. Her tiny beak and widened eyes. Talons held up. The great, fissured wounds that were torn down a form so small. A small flicker of courage sparked in the dragon's stomach, it was miniscule and weak, like a waning candle but there was courageous light in his soul. The ghostly smell of burning pheasant broke his fearful stance. 'You won't hurt her, Brother. You won't have a single claw on her whilst I stand here.' He said. His voice growling.

The others jostled.

'Where is your place?' Asked the brother, a sneer on him. 'Under the guiles of the witch-bird? Break your chains or I'll die breaking them in your stead.'

'I have no chains. I saved her, I flew after of my own mind.' Said Lusik. 'And you will not touch her.'

'Suffer no animal bird to live.' Said the brother, 'It's darkness has seeped too long. I'll break your bonds. No brother are you, but a slave.' His bloody eyes turned to the Griffon.

'Do not.' Said Lusik. He arched forward. The brothers closed tighter.

'Your curse is clever.' He's claws opened like five knives. 'For now, we both die.'

Her stomach curled into a writhing ball and the skin beneath her fur tingled with veins of fear. He lunged. She shut her eyes and heard the howling.

Lusik dived. The brothers bounded forward and shunted him down. Two clambered on to his back. They gripped his neck and held his thrashing tail, his hindlegs burned as he reared up before the smaller brothers pulled his forelegs down and slipped him and slammed him onto his stomach, nearly chomping his own tongue as the air pushed out of his chest. Stars flickered in his sight. They took care not to claw his flesh.

The leader was leaping for the Griffon, his claws outstretched like granite knives. His teeth bared and his eyes bloody. Red for revenge.

Then he stopped.

In the air, his body stilled and his hindlegs impacted the ground, he was arched up as if impaled against an invisible spear. Blood bloomed from beneath his left foreleg. He took a deep gulp of air. Then he started gasping. His forelegs flailed. The cherry tide dripped from his body like a leaking pipe. Making a little pitter-patter sound. The brothers, Lusik and all, stood agape.

The Red Griffon met the leader's eyes. Eyes that were intent on rending her apart and tearing out her throat. His gaze was terrified and confused. Hazy. His face contorted. He was lifted, his hindlegs dangled and his tail was limp, cloth ripped and the garments over his wound fell away with a gush of red that splattered onto the ground. It looked metallic.

She whimpered as he rose. Looking down she scampered to the edge of the darkness. The ice, despite lacking a sky was now perfectly reflective like crystal water in a warm archipelago. Not that the Griffon had ever seen such a thing. And there in that reflection. A robed griffon, twice the size of her, with massive talons held a steel halberd tipped with a crescent spike that was poking through the left side of the brother. The tip glinted red. His forelegs were tensed, and he held up the drake impaled on the weapon. A cowl hid his face. But through the darkness of his hood, a long beak poked through.

The wind hummed.

The darkness wisped and more griffons floated out. A pit of spiked halberds was beneath the feet of the brothers. The halberds came forward and pointed. She found her voice. 'The reflection! No, stop!' She said. Her call turning into a scream. The halberds hovered close over Lusik's stomach. The brothers gazed down and leaped off their pinned brethren, their eyes widened from a dull sadness to a petrified flight, they were surrounded by the spectres of the mirror-land. Lusik jumped. A look of fearful determination on his muzzle. His lips were set like stone.

'Don't fear. Don't fear here.' Said Lusik. His voice boomed into an echo that displaced the wind's hum. His brothers looked to him. 'This is the source of our evil! Look to it, not to her! Not to.'

She squealed. A crescent blade was thrust forward and split Lusik's underbelly. There was nothing on his face, no cry of pain, no smoldering rage or ice-splitting roar, he simply looked at her and an odd revelation was in his mood, as if he was pondering some esoteric problem. Then he sighed and crumpled down.

His body was unmoving. Save for the twitching tip of his tail. Her beak gaped. A scream wouldn't come out, her throat was dry like parchment and her legs felt like they were being held to the ground by powerful claws. Her eyes darted down. They were.

A freezing touch clasped her legs. It burned her skin. Dark griffons were holding her reflection tight, their grasps were the pale touch of something that had been long dead in the icy wastes. Unnatural and trapped. She could feel the icy grooves in their talons against her feathers. She could feel their stagnant blood. She could feel their cloudy eyes. There was pain and regret. Like Lusik said.

She cried out Lusik's name. She shouted and screamed at his still body. Tears poured down her face. They dripped off the end of her beak and sizzled into the ice. The brothers struggled as the silent clanging of halberds was visible beneath the ice, they thrusted forward, some drakes dodged but others were felled and collapsed. Their frills were flared. She began to sink. The demons beneath pulled her. Her muscles fired with exhaustion, she shouted and writhed before sinking down to a sob, her misty vision only on Lusik – surrounded by his falling brothers. Her legs gave.

As her body sunk into the reflection, the pain ebbed away. She was sinking into a cool pupa, where there was no feeling. The tears slowed. She gulped. The air was frosty and tasted like an icy stream. The tide of paralysis reached her stomach and the wounds' painful throb drifted away like a dream. There she halted. For a moment. A disk of black cherry surrounded Lusik, its boundaries bloomed outwards from his stomach, staining his white scales crimson, his robe was heavy and damp, and his one frill flittered motionless in the wind. Then she disappeared under.

At first, it was sensation-less. People were never aware of when they fell asleep. It simply happened. And it was remarkably quick. Then she knew. Not dreaming. Fast, moving fast, plummeting and falling like a stone – no, not that – sinking like a stone, in an abyss, watching the light above fade away like the sun behind a sooty cloud. It was gone. The Griffon couldn't see, but now she could hear. Wooshing and bubbling. She could breath. The air was old and tasted like soot. The abyss had texture. It was like the spine of a feather, soft and ticklish but thick. Sinking. Sinking, so very deep.

The Abyss was not malevolent. It was maternal. Sincere, almost loving. This made her hate it and fear it even more.

'Lusik!' Said the Griffon. Her call echoing like a shout in a cathedral. Answering back at her, each instance quieter than the last.

Lusik, Lusik, Lusik, Lusik, Lusik.

Red feathers floated past. They were drifting down. Like the falling leaves of a jasmine tree. Bloody tears. Thousands of them. Rushing past her, or rather she was rushing past them. They stretched out into the abyss until at the edges of her sight the image formed into a red, pinstripe pattern with abyssal polka dots. Some twirled. Others danced. It was mockingly serene, she felt the wounds on her body tingle and the stump of her tail tickle, though she was plummeting down she felt no nausea. In fact. She was as comfortable as if she was sleeping on top of her blankets on a hot, summer day.

The ground was coming.

It was a sense. Like when a rabbit's ears prick up when a wolf is prowling. It just knows. The Griffon knew that her gigantic fall into the world's depths was about to end. She shut her eyes. Streams of tears flew up, before separating into floating droplets. They hung there before dropping down after their owner, some splashed onto the red feathers, flipping them over and causing them to drop faster than float.

Lusik. Her hut, its fissured walls and mattress. Summer, her tufts of fur and feathers left on the floor. The prickly scent of fresh parchment. Piles of scrolls and books left open, scattered about on her desk with marked pages next to the squeaky lantern and waxing candle. The fresh fruit. Piled in a basket left next to the door. Tangy oranges. The faint sounds of playing children. Him leaning on the wall.

This looks like a haystack.

It's not that bad.

It is.

Her laughter.

Found your city?

The ground was close now.

I'm always looking. He says I look too hard.

You need perspective.

He came over and looked at the books. Oh yes, perspective.

He saw a line and commented on it. Then slowly, chattering back and forth, they were seated at the desk munching on oranges. Mulling over page after page. Laughing, poking fun. Even as dusk loomed over the horizon's lip. And into the evening.

It was her warmest memory. Doing something she liked. With her only companion.

Then there was blackness blacker than black. And the Griffon thought no more.

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