Tall Tales: The Nymphs' Symphony (Scott T Beith's Tall Tales Saga Book 1) Read online

  Published in Australia 2019

  Copyright © S. T. Beith 2019

  Typesetting & E-book: Amit Dey

  Cover: Simon Critchell

  The right of Scott Beith to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN: 978-0-6485216-2-4 (Kindle)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to give a quick thanks to all those who helped convert this idea into paper. It is crazy to think what started off as just a silly concept of a morality tale has reached the depth and magnitude of a first edition release and I would just like to take a small moment to give considerable special mentions to those who made such a vital impact in bringing this book idea into the light of day.

  Thank you to,

  Teodora Chino for her amazing graphical designs and artistry in developing the various front covers on behalf of this franchise.

  Hassan Andrabi for his exceptional cartography pieces.

  Linda Lycett of Aurora House Publishing and all her accompanying staff for their combined guidance and help throughout the physical production of this novel.

  My parents, Harry and Corinne Beith, for their love and support throughout the lengthy process.

  All friends and family members for their patience and understanding during the books physical production.

  And lastly, to my lovely girlfriend, Megan Wilks, for standing by me during the seemingly endless years involved in not only writing a manuscript, but awaiting the novel’s submission to be approved, edited and eventually printed.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Paradise

  2. Brawl

  3. Spoils

  4. The King’s Trail

  5. Eclipse

  6. Destiny

  7. Odyssey

  8. Eye of the Storm

  9. Revelation

  10. Banquet

  11. The Feast

  12. Realisation

  13. The Chase

  14. Complex

  15. Underbelly

  16. The Summit

  17. Syndicate

  18. Credence

  19. Death Trap

  20. Titan

  21. Conquest

  22. Mountainside Pass

  23. Southshore

  24. Midnight Pulse

  25. Triumph

  26. Treason

  27. The damned

  28. Truth

  29. Mercy

  30. Regret

  31. Refuge

  32. Under-hollow

  33. Avernus

  34. Nadir

  35. Uprising

  36. Litany

  37. Inferno

  38. Cataclysm

  39. Collision Course

  40. Dark Child

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  So I would like to tell you my story, the story that will explain everything about yourself and how we all ended up where we are right now. Although I guess to tell my story properly I’m going to have to start with the tales of those who came before us – back during the darker times of our predecessors, when I was just a helpless infant growing up in the heart of a savage and uncharted wilderness.

  Part I: sunrise

  I was told that it all began with some rather unstable electrical currents, the dangers of working with tiny little sparks of lightning that spat out from small shiny moving clockwork cranks as electricity jolted across the rusty old brackets designed but failing to holster each part, all while those sparks and other high speed metal fragments splintered straight up into the arm of the young engineer who tinkered with his globular prototype machine, persevering despite the tremendous scar tissue and pain his serrated mechanical device inflicted back upon him.

  To him it would have been like working inside a stuffy iron maiden, working despite a perpetual constricting fear of dying from a thousand minor cuts grazing his arms, legs, face and torso. The eternal dread that came along with this apparent torture device as each rotation of its turbine cogs caused clusters of sharp shrapnel to be dislodged from their diamond glowing sockets, followed by the agony of having a hundred miniaturised lightning bolts continuously arch outwards with static charge and constantly electrocute the unsteady hands of that devoted teenage technician as he persistently endeavoured to repair each frayed silver component and replace each cracked translucent blue power stone with a new one that was waiting on the floor, ready to be lodged and reinstalled into the inner lining of his great spherical man-sized machine.

  In the nights before its successful solar ignition, it would have looked as lifeless and wasteful as a dead star in the middle of open space. Back then, though, the sheer fact that he could see and touch the cold inside casing of its inner cages without as much as a blister on his hand or the pull of gravity trying to swallow him and all other broken fragments up was testament enough of the failure he must have felt inside, let alone, the next day’s physical scrutiny for wasting precious resources, the abusive sceptics who awaited for him asleep downwards in the castle streets below the great southern tower spire, adding to both the pressures and drive he had for success.

  All up until one random night when things just went differently – like the stars had all aligned in the sky for him and somehow he had finally managed to screw each silver cog in one by one and was able to manually spin and rotate each turbine into the machine without a single diamond falling out, right up until they all ran smooth and fluently in sequence on their own without any of his own intervention. His machine working beautifully in conjunction with the thousand wired components pulsing downwards below the trench platform chamber floor of the top level towers as it moved into its unseen mechanical underbelly.

  From deep cold blue to a burning iridescent orange-red, his solar sphere and its huge nexus crystal appeared to be growing molten, liquidizing the gold casing just after he managed to scamper out from the orb, running to the southern spires spiralling tower steps before he’d even realised what he had actually managed to accomplish that night. Oblivious to the fact that he was the very first to overlook the fiery ignition of the machine as it began to mimic the down-scaled appearance and ferocity of the natural working sun.

  The young man’s name was Midas, and at the time, he was just some random peasant son of a whack-job mining entrepreneur who lived just outside of the Capital, south of the beach valleys. A child born and raised to believe machines could be built to accomplish the impossible, including things as cosmic and cataclysmic as creating a small secondary sun to remove the night sky permanently. His life’s work based on some pseudo-scientific belief that extracting sunrays from other sources of the cosmos was possible, and through its creation, a way to fortify the lives of those who lived outside of our own high castle’s walls and ensure they would never again have to deal with the dreaded carnivorous creatures of the night.

  Part II: Forerunners

  Perhaps I’ve started too far forward and need to go back a few more steps. Begin from our earliest dawn and explain exactly what we are as a society, to begin with the forerunners of our kind…

  You see, we call ourselves forest-nymphs for good reason, and that’s because us spr
ites weren’t the only species of nymph to exist. Once we lived under the water with all the monsters of the deep. We originated from a few fanatic descendants who dared to ascend from what we now humbly call ‘The Abyssal Sea’: a dark treacherous ocean that still sits right below our very own cliff-hanging castle.

  But for those first few sea-nymph pioneers, the ones who came out to evolve into what we are now – they had no castle or stronghold to hide behind. They came out into one dense unforgiving rainforest full of colossal new-age insect predators, trying to free themselves from their old barbaric ways.

  It may sound strange, but we directly descended from a species of fierce territorial carnivores and cannibals who somehow managed to adapt and change their ways long enough to live harmoniously with each other and the rest of the tropical land, learning to forage sugars and herbs for their sustenance over blood and flesh. Untrustworthy savages forced to make and then break bread with their neighbours just so they could maximize their ability to survive in a terrain most Aquarius species simply could not, becoming the first forest-nymph sprites to ever settle upon our Borderlands.

  It wasn’t all grim, however. As you will come to find, this new environment does come with certain perks and privileges: a civilization breaking free from the claws, fangs, tails and scales that alienated our ancestors from ever working together. We grew soft but industrious hands that helped us become the great explorers and innovators that set us aside from most other creatures of the wild.

  From the days of the very first pioneers, our species have undergone many diverse changes. Each new climate becoming a new opportunity for a blessing, as our bodies began to adapt and specialise into all the varying niches of our new terrestrial terrain,

  As thanks to those siren sea-nymph forerunners, we are graced with unique attributes and abilities, varying tribe to tribe. The nymphs of this new age each gaining one of more evasive adaptations to escape the prosecution of their homeland’s giant terrestrial predators. Specialties that now define us across all current races and clans. Whether we grew up by the swamps with an ability to camouflage and hide, or be like the nymphs born by the flats or sands, notorious for skills like digging or leaping away from potential dangers.

  I, myself, used to be teased about being born and raised in a cave, for I’m the only one in the entire Capital who can move and manipulate shadows like clouds compressed solid into stone, melding and moulding them like an artist would a piece of clay, glass or snow.

  Part III: Famine

  Most elders won’t even talk about the time before the spire. But the few that do, tell us that life back then was pure misery. That famine and disease had rotted away at the gentle minds of our humble nymph species, with our freedom and independence slowly reverting back to a primal solitary nature, all because of a few too many prolonged winter freezes.

  It was said that when individual colonies’ harvests began to decline, that the poor and hungry resorted to begging and stealing from those closest to them. Swamp saffron in particular – a grassy lily pad plant usually plentiful across the great forest – was our most common flower granule at that time. A cereal grain churned and crushed into a stringy straw-like nectar that supplied our towns with more than enough calories to live upon, suddenly became endangered due to a less radiant day.

  Simply put, the problem was our safe food sources were depleting and yet our population was constantly on the incline, that every tribe was finding it impossible to provide for themselves and their own expanding society. And so, the strong hoarded what little they had and fought off those who pleaded for the more privileged to share, allowing the weak to succumb to thoughts of either thievery or starvation. And it was because of this the trust and trade that joined the villages began to rapidly diminish. Borders being set and protected as an imbalance of wealth created a world only violence could thrive within.

  Territory had divided as clans battled furiously over the rights to any meadows still free from ice or flooding, and if it weren’t for Midas and his oldest associate Sir Helios, then our society would have fallen even further into this dark and feral anarchy…

  And on that reason alone, Midas’s invention of the Sunspire was cause enough to crown him as our first ever king, for he was the first ever individual to yield abilities so influential to our kind, that the other tribes felt he was worthy of a title above their own tribal leaders. They were willing to bow before him and unite under his leadership so that we could together try and take more dominance over the treacherous land we now call home.

  Part IV: sunset

  Some say it was the pressures of leadership that got to him, and others say it was because of the machine itself. Either way, there were diabolical consequences of manipulating Mother Nature like Midas had, but no one expected how quickly such a sickness would progress. Nor just how quickly his dreams could turn into nightmares. How, in a reign of only three short years, could the king’s sleeplessness finally take its physical toll upon his mind, soul and body.

  At first, it started with him wandering the palace halls aimlessly, wallowing to some strange sentiment as he talked to himself repetitively, seeing phantoms and ghosts wherever he walked, the weary king and his family suddenly paranoid and irrational of all he saw around him.

  His dearest friends Sir Helios and Dr Maxwell worried over their beloved king’s invaluable state of mind, they were the first ones to realise that his terrible dreams were starting to affect more than just his slumber.

  Midas’s beloved new wife, Queen Camilla, supported his every step without hesitation nor question, but even she admitted to seeing signs of madness manifesting within him. An evil slowly seeping inside with every moment of mechanical maintenance he spent replacing the cogs and wires to his iridescent everlasting machine.

  His wife once told me that he used to speak of infernal wars and the plight of the souls he could see suffering in hell. Stories of invisible ghosts trying to talk to him from within the crystals, attempting to convince him to letting them out upon our world, speaking tales of demons rising and angels falling while the innocent in between were left in constant torment.

  In his delirium, he had envisioned a whole new world of desperation and despair, sick thoughts that began to deeply terrify his own citizens and friends, as their own desire to intervene and act upon such personal delusions began to lose him his favour with the majority of elected tribal leaders.

  It didn’t take too long before Sir Helios took measures, taking control over the machine, seeing as he was one of the few that helped Midas build it. He had always operated close beside Midas in the past, and although he never admitted to seeing such demented illusions, he believed restricting Midas from access to the machine was the only thing he could do to calm his friend’s unstable nerves – a very sombre act that inadvertently led to the destruction and divide of our entire Capital.

  The kingdom splitting into two the following twilight; King Midas used what little influence he had left to lock himself up in his huge spiralling Sunspire tower. His most loyal of guards sent out onto the streets to enforce a curfew that might keep the civilians inside their houses as a war clashed between Loyalists and Mutineers.

  People screamed in panic, hiding under beds as they heard the sounds of something like glass beginning to shatter and break. The Sunspire was turned off as its biggest crystal was hammered relentlessly by the king, illuminating crystal shards burning into old wounds as his skin was chipped by diamond fragments upon each lumberjack swing of his enormous magnetic gold hammer maul. All while his warrior wife shifted from side to side like smoke, teleporting as she attempted to battle and barricade every door the mutineers perilously tried to come through.

  Truth be told, most among us like to argue that its only ever the victor that gets to share their side of the story, but in this circumstance, agreeance was unanimous in just how one-sided Helios’s uprising was as he successfully managed to usurp the throne. The Sunspire globe managing to cling to life upon its gol
d and silver threads, effectively bringing the end for Midas and his short reign as our benevolent king.

  Helios was crowned our new king in the short weeks to come, upon much argument and debate surrounding many other powerful nobles who all thought themselves more worthy. The fact was no one could prevent his coronation while Midas remained in his custody. Helios’s first act as king being tasked to figure out how he could undo the permanent damage done to the splintering Sunspire orb, all while the former king’s trial for high treason commenced among the angry villagers who felt most betrayed by him and what he near successfully managed to accomplish.

  It was alleged that Midas shouted in protest to every word being told about him during his court hearing. Judge Delphi was one of his closest friends, and yet it was she who announced the severity to which he was being charged of: a conviction he disputed up until the very last day before his sentencing, where he changed his plea to guilty in order to grant mercy for all the minority who followed him loyally.

  For his crimes, the former king was banished from the Borderlands and forced to live in exile, way outside the safety of his own kingdom – a punishment as savage and virtually indistinguishable from death if you or I were forced to make the choice.

  His wife, however, was stripped of all title and privilege but was given an ounce of clemency, despite the role she’d played. She and her husband thought nothing else but there newborn baby son when Midas begged for her to remain in the Capital and be spared from the barren wastelands that was the desolate Badlands’ territory.

  As with that being that, a new king and queen were found. Former friends became enemies, as for almost two full decades, the House of King Helios and Queen Milena reigned supreme….

  1

  Paradise

  “KYA!” someone screamed in the distance, breaking me from my pleasant daydreams as blood rushed to my head in an almost dizzying panic. I fumbled the washcloth in my hands as I gripped the stone statue in front of me to reaffirm my balance, so startled by the voice. The statue was of Queen Milena. A strong slender silver-haired serpent of a woman in royal regalia. A military commander by trade, depicted wearing the most deceiving of elegant robes.