Still thwarting Sloth's mind control... Circulation: 196,994,887 Issue: 955 | 4th day of Running, Y24
Home | Archives Articles | Editorial | Short Stories | Comics | New Series | Continued Series
 

The Fate of Valeane


by herdygerdy

--------

Fyora walked through the meadow, brushing the tips of her fingers across the flowers below her. The meadow stretched on as far as her eyes could see, and the flowers were all the colours of the rainbow. Clusters of red, blue, green, yellow, purple, and white blooms that had once been isolated from each other now intermingled thanks to her efforts in cultivation. The entire meadow was flourishing, and it brought joy to her heart to see it in such a state.

     Her eyes fell on a solitary bloom, standing tall among the others. It was of a purple so dark as to almost be black, and swayed gently in the breeze. It was a flower that Fyora had tried so hard to cultivate in her garden, but despite her efforts it proved resistant to the soil. Even worse, it had begun to poison the flowers that surrounded it. Any other gardener would have excised it immediately, but Fyora was of the opinion that there was a place for all flowers in her garden.

     As she watched, the petals fell from the flower and the stem shrivelled, and the sight filled the Faerie Queen with sadness. Something precious and unique had been lost, and could never be regained.

     She knelt down to try and salvage it before it rotted away, but a voice behind her caused her to start.

     “Fyora!”

     The Queen turned, to see another Faerie standing behind her. She had purple hair and wings of violet dappled with orange. It was a familiar face, but one Fyora had not seen for centuries. The sight filled her with happiness, and a pang of longing.

     “Valeane!” Fyora greeted her.

     “Fyora!” the Faerie shouted, as if she had not seen the Queen standing right in front of her.

     There was panic in her voice. An insistence that spoke to a growing feeling of dread in the pit of Fyora’s stomach.

     The flowers around where Valeane stood were shrinking back, wilting as new growth sprung up in their place. Great tentacles erupted from the ground, purple in colour and slick with a disgusting slime, like some titanic Krawken was buried in the garden and now fighting free of its bindings. The tentacles writhed and slithered, like worms searching for a feast, clinging to Valeane’s legs and dragging her down into the dirt. The churning of the soil had ruined the flowers, and Fyora wondered if she would ever be able to repair the damage.

     “Help me!” Valeane pleaded as the ground consumed her, holding out a hand to her Queen.

     “Valeane!” Fyora shouted back, reaching for her but finding herself unable to move as the tentacles now held her fast as well.

     “Valeane!”

     The sky had gone dark, and an ill wind blew the few remaining petals of the garden to the abyss that Fyora suddenly knew lay beyond her garden’s limits. The tentacles were everywhere, and the Faerie Queen felt a terrible, cold presence within them. An unconscionable evil that existed in some abject sense beyond her senses. An evil defined by how utterly irrelevant the existence of all other life was to it.

     Fyora tried again to reach for her friend, but the last of Valeane disappeared below the ground, and she was lost.

     “Valeane!”

     The Faerie Queen woke with a start. Beads of sweat ran down her, and she found herself short of breath.

     Her bedchambers were dark and silent. There was no sign of Valeane, the horrible creature, or the garden. But it had felt so real to her.

     The door to the room opened slightly and a familiar pink Gelert poked her head around it. Her unkempt purple hair suggested that she herself had recently been asleep in one of the adjoining rooms.

     “Is everything alright, Your Majesty?” she asked. “I heard shouting.”

     Fyora gave a polite, embarrassed smile to her maid.

     “Yes, Celandra,” she said. “Just a bad dream. I apologise for waking you, I am fine.”

     The dream, of course, had left her quite shaken. But Fyora was the Queen of Faerieland. She needed to be above such things. And Celandra was one of the most notorious gossips in all of Faerieland.

     ***

     The white Xweetok rushed through the corridors of the castle, her pink armour shining in the early morning sun as it cascaded through the open windows. It was a beautiful day in Faerieland, as were most, and the chirping of the Petpets in the trees of the Queen’s gardens below echoed in her ears alongside the clanking of her armour. It was magically enchanted to be near weightless, one of the perks of her job, that at least afforded her the luxury of some extra speed.

     She rounded the corner to the Privy Council Chambers and found a blue Draik standing guard.

     “You have sent my apologies?” she asked.

     The Draik gave a brief smile.

     “No need, Isobel,” he told her. “The Council hasn’t started. The Queen herself is late. You’ve earned yourself a reprieve. What was it this time?”

     Captain Smith was in charge of the guards within the castle. He, of course, was within the Queen’s circle of trust, but the Xweetok was not in the habit of discharging information unless strictly necessary. Certainly, the truth, that she had been fielding agents across Neopia to stop a coup attempt against the Moltaran Council, was out of the question. Secrets upon secrets, this was how Lady Isobel Falmouth operated.

     “Nothing exotic, I’m afraid,” she replied. “I got caught speaking with Vyline in the gardens. She has a new breed of azalea she is most enthused about.”

     Vyline, Fyora’s personal gardener and the Earth Faerie in charge of maintaining the gardens of the palace, always had some new flower to be enthused about. It was a lie that utterly convinced Captain Smith, or at least he believed it as much as anything else he heads from Lady Falmouth’s mouth. He nodded knowingly and opened the door for her.

     The Privy Council Chambers were near Fyora’s throne room, well-appointed but comparatively cosy. The members of Fyora’s advisory council were seated around a large, circular pink table. There was Aethia the Battle Faerie, head of Faerieland’s army. Isobel took the vacant seat between her and the Light Faerie Florina, head of the Faerieland Employment Agency and Fyora’s advisor on economic matters. Opposite was the blue Kacheek, Kekou, who served as Fyora’s Council Attendant and Herald. A glorified receptionist, in any state, but nevertheless an important figure in Faerieland.

     “The Queen is late?” she asked him. “Some business has overrun?”

     “I think not,” Kekou replied in his smart tone, carefully adjusting his half-moon glasses. “The word from her chambers is that she has slept in.”

     “I’m sure we can afford the Queen a rest now and again,” the Water Faerie next to him said.

     She was Marina, the Faerie who ran the Healing Springs and sat on the Privy Council to advise on matters of health. The final member of the council, the Fire Faerie Shyvara, nodded in agreement. She was the head of the Faerieland Academy, and advised Fyora on education.

     Isobel took note that Aethia, Marina, Florina, and Shyvara all looked rather tired. Normally, she would expect this at the weekly meeting of the council following the frivolities of the Faerie Festival, but that was months away. She, of course, was naturally inquisitive about such things. She was Fyora’s spymaster, and keeper of secrets. Her role on the Privy Council was over matters of intelligence and espionage.

     Isobel was about to voice her concern when she heard the clanking of Captain Smith’s armour tightening outside the door, and a moment later Queen Fyora swept in.

     She looked, as ever, immaculate, with not a hair out of place. Though from her demeanour one might think she had only just risen from bed.

     “I apologise,” she said as she sat at the remaining chair around the table. “I appear to have overslept today. Kekou, please clear my ten o’clock audience and reschedule it. Apologise to the Seekers.”

     Kekou nodded obediently and noted something down on his parchment.

     “It is most unlike me, but I’m afraid I did not sleep well last night,” Fyora added.

     “No need to apologise, Your Highness,” Marina said. “In truth, neither did I. A most disturbing nightmare kept me up much of the night.”

     “Me as well,” Aethia said with a deep frown.

     Shyvara nodded in agreement.

     “Well I had a most pleasant night’s sleep,” Kekou added, missing the sinister air that was descending over the others. “I had a most wonderful dream about the Faerie Festival. I ate the most devastatingly large ice cream sundae. It’s a good thing calories don’t apply in one’s sleep!”

     Fyora looked to Florina.

     “Bad dreams here, as well,” she confirmed. “One in particular. It felt, more concrete. I was standing in a garden.”

     “Fyora’s garden!” Marina gasped. “And the flowers were beautiful, but one, a black one, was dying.”

     “And then Valeane was there,” Aethia confirmed. “Crying out for help. I dream often of Valeane, I thought nothing of it. Are you saying we all had the same dream?”

     “She was dragged under the soil,” Shyvara said. “And there were these horrible… tentacles. And a feeling. A feeling of malevolence I have never felt before.”

     The Fire Faerie gave a little shiver at the memory of it.

     “Isobel?” Fyora asked.

     “I had no such dream, Majesty,” the Xweetok replied. “But you know my views on coincidences. That all the members of this council who had this dream are Faeries, and myself and Kekou did not, reeks of suspicion to me.”

     “Agreed,” Fyora said with a firm nod. “I think we shall table our discussions for today. This… this troubles me, somehow. I cannot express how or why, but I feel we must get to the bottom of it. Aethia, Isobel, make the appropriate inquiries about the castle. Find out how far this has spread. Report back to me in my chambers in an hour, if you would. If this was more than a mere nightmare, we owe it to Valeane to investigate.”

     Isobel agreed. It was not uncommon for Faeries to sometimes have prophetic dreams. Light Faeries in particular were receptive to it, and a smaller subset of Faeries were gifted with a form of precognition known as the Sight. Something about them that no modern scholar had been able to understand seemed vaguely decoupled from linear time, allowing them to glimpse outside of the normal.

     “My Queen, if I may suggest you contact Kaia?” Isobel added. “If she has seen anything more specific, it may be helpful.”

     Kaia was one of the few in Faerieland to have the Sight. She was one of Fyora’s most trusted, despite the fact that she was still studying at the Academy.

     “I can have her sent over as soon as I am back in my office at the Academy,” Shyvara suggested.

     “That would be most helpful,” Fyora said, standing as a signal that the others, too, could stand. “Let us more quickly but quietly on this matter. I do not wish to cause a panic if it turns out to be nothing.”

     An hour later, both Isobel and Aethia reported back to Fyora in her chambers. Isobel noted how troubled Aethia looked, an expression that she rarely wore.

     “I have questioned as many in the castle as I could,” Isobel reported. “It is as we guessed. All the Faeries had the same dream, even down to the minor details. And none of the Neopets have. My cursory questions in the wider city suggest much the same.”

     “I have contacted a few Faeries outside of Faerieland,” Aethia added. “It is as Lady Falmouth says. Taelia on Terror Mountain, Siyana in Altador, Illusen in Meridell. All had the dream. It isn’t limited to the city. This is across Neopia.”

     “Kaia has seen nothing beyond the dream,” Fyora supplied. “But something is wrong here. It must be Valeane, a plea for help somehow. But why now, after all these years?”

     “I must confess I feel a little out of my depth here,” Isobel said. “Valeane, as in the previous Battle Faerie?”

     “The original,” Aethia corrected her.

     Fyora gave a sad smile to Aethia. She thought of telling her that she need not live in Valeane’s shadow, but now was not the time for it.

     “She was my General,” Fyora said. “During the Faerie Wars. I brought peace, but as with many things, that peace had to be won by the sword first before Faeries would listen to my words. She, the Darkest Faerie, Ilere. They were my three most trusted advisers in those days. Together, we united Faerie kind and founded the halls of Faerieland. Valeane was an old Faerie. One of the first. She was already a great General by that point, the victor of many battles known for her indomitable spirit and fearsome valour. After the peace was won, she assumed her natural position as the head of the Faerieland army. But she, like many who fought in the war, felt restless in the following peace. It is not something we talk about these days, but it was… difficult for many to leave the war behind.”

     “Valeane devoted much of her time into trying to master the power of a pair of swords, and ancient relic from the first days of the Faeries,” Fyora continued. “It was a task many had failed in before, and she was no different. She failed, the true secret of the swords eluding her. No one thought any lesser of her, but Valeane did. She allowed the failure to define her. When a Dark Faerie named Fiona attempted to challenge her, she was bested. Others drove Fiona from Faerieland, but the damage had been done to Valeane. She decided then to hide the twin blades of fire and ice away. She disappeared from Faerieland for a time, but when she returned, she seemed… defeated. Then, she left once more, and simply disappeared, more than a thousand years ago now. No one has seen her in the flesh since.”

     “A thousand years is a long time for silence if she survived,” Isobel pointed out. “Entire nations have risen and fallen in that time.”

     “Yet Faeries are difficult things to destroy,” Fyora said. “And believe me, the death of a Faerie is a terrible thing.”

     Aethia nodded in agreement at Fyora’s statement.

     “Besides,” the current Battle Faerie said. “It was not silence. She has not been seen in person since she left Faerieland, but I encountered her spirit hundreds of years later when I was a young Faerie at the Academy. By then she was a legend, some of the younger Faeries even dared to doubt if she had ever really existed. I researched her and found clues she had left to the hiding place of the twin swords. I claimed them and used them to best the Dark Faerie Fiona. To redeem Valeane of her failure. But when I claimed the blades, I saw a vision of her. She urged me to solve the riddle of the blades, to succeed where she failed.”

     Isobel frowned.

     “This sounds like you saw a ghost,” she said carefully, not wanting to insult her friend’s memory. “In the Haunted Woods, of all places. If Valeane is already dead, what aid can we give her?”

     “It was not a ghost,” Aethia said firmly in a voice that made it clear she would not broker debate. “I know it, in my bones. It was… I felt her presence. Not a chill but a warm, reassuring glow. I knew she was far away, yet speaking to me clearly as if she were with me in that moment.”

     “I agree,” Fyora said. “And regardless, as a ghost roaming the Woods she would have been spotted again in the hundreds of years since Aethia’s experience. Valeane sent her a message from wherever she is. And this dream, it is another such message, only far more desperate. We must find her, Isobel. We simply must.”

     Isobel let out a gentle sigh.

     “As ever, your will is my command, Majesty,” she said. “If she lives, I will find her, no matter where. Though, I do feel I could use more to go off. Neopia is a big place, my Queen.”

     Fyora wore a pained expression for a moment, as if remembering some terrible hardship.

     “On that note, I believe I can help,” she said. “The dream, I think, holds a clue. Much of it was, I think, metaphorical. The flowers in the garden represented the Faeries of Neopia, that I try so hard to steward. Then there was the black flower, the darkest of them all, that wilted and died. I think you know who that flower represented - the Darkest Faerie. You’ve seen the reports out of Altador, how the Darkest Faerie recently attacked them. I believe that should be your first step.”

     “What does the Darkest Faerie have to do with all this?” Isobel asked.

     “When Valeane disappeared,” Aethia answered. “She left Faerieland for Altador. She left to visit the Darkest Faerie.”

      To be continued…

 
Search the Neopian Times




Week 955 Related Links


Other Stories




Submit your stories, articles, and comics using the new submission form.