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After a meeting that lasted about an hour, and came to little if any conclusions, they all returned to the forest clearing where the wizards of Kenefick were encamped. It was the middle of the afternoon on a warm spring day, the forest was just on the change from its winter gloom to the bright greens of spring buds. A minstrel was, however, and for some unknown reason, strumming his lyre and singing an autumnal iambic octameter.
Golden hues from beige to crimson,
crisp and fresh on dew-soaked grounds.
Carried on late summer breezes,
blocking byways, forming mounds.
Autumn, fall, what e’er you call it,
its beauty shown at every turn.
It hearkens winter’s frosts and snowfall,
when naked trees begin nocturne.
August followed by September,
and October then begins.
With icy hands and frosty bowers,
autumn fruits and huge pumpkins.
So, each year comes, and each year goes,
as we think back and remember.
That life is just a splendid time,
as autumn leaves September.
The last words had just left his lips when a chill came over the camp, icy fingers moved across the ground and up the trees until a frost hung heavy on every blade of grass and ice on every leaf and twig.
“The Abaddon is coming,” said Glynda, Dragon Slayer already drawn and ready.
“What does that mean?” asked Tom.
“I’m not sure, Dragon Slayer just told me somehow.”
The cloudless sky grew suddenly darker as if it were early evening on a winter’s day. Then they saw them, black amorphous figures floating in between the trees and slowly getting closer. Others flying silently overhead, they made no noise, they had little form or substance, nebulous in shape, but the closer they came, the colder it became. They had no faces as such, but under their black hooded cloaks you could still make out eyes, like dark grey circles in a void. Their arms were like an ambiguous appendage of a cold breeze amongst the black rags which formed their vague shape, the rags themselves were caught in the chill wind and flapped about like a coal miners shirttail at the end of a night shift on a stormy night. All who saw them felt utterly lost as if in a dream, they seemed to have the very will to live being drawn out of them, no one seemed to do anything, they just stood, some wept with despair, awaiting their fate. The closer they drew, the more the dread inside their souls increased, fear gripped the very heart of everyone present and the cold penetrated to your innermost being, but none felt any urge to release themselves from the state of solemn melancholy they found themselves in; they just stood like lambs awaiting the slaughter man’s knife.
Ren, being a Golden Dragon, although filled with a feeling of sorrowful pensiveness, was relatively unaffected by the onslaught. Ren called to Tom.
“Use the light of your diamond to drive it away.”
Tom suddenly snapped out of his stupor, raised his staff from the ground and let the purest, brightest white light flood out of his staff towards the black spectres. He held his staff high in the air for the light to radiate as far as it could reach. Those Abaddon that the light touched screamed as if in pain, a dreadful, mournful scream that sounded like death itself. Then Jon joined him, followed by Flintock, Llewellyn, and Gwen. The light was holding them at bay, but it was a battle of wills. The Abaddon, whatever they were, pushed against the light, sometimes gaining a few feet or even yards, screaming as they did, but then, as the wizards fought back the creatures would retreat a little, screaming ever louder as they went. Then Glynda, who recovered soon after Tom, quickly worked a ball of pure white energy in her hands, she released it one hundred feet into the air where it spread all around in a flash of blinding white light. The Abaddon vanished; the light had truly driven away the darkness, the Abaddon were gone. The ice thawed and warmth returned to the clearing.
Llewellyn called to Big John, “Why did you not join in the fight?”
“We have no wands of staffs to fight with,” he replied.
“But we saw you all with staffs with glowing stones when you first morphed back into your true form.”
“Ceremonial, they are only used for ceremonial duties, we use neither wand nor staff for our magic, we use our hands like Glynda. Anyway, you all seemed to be handling it pretty well on your own.”
“Well, you could have chucked a few balls of pure white energy into the forest to frighten them away.”
“Alas, such magic we have rarely seen, we can raise balls of destructive energy, but that was just the purest whitest light, angel light we call it, but never have we experienced it. Glynda is more special than we knew.”
“Well, a few balls of destructive energy would not have gone amiss.”
“No, we have met them before, by the time we had driven them away, there would not be a tree left in your forest, just huge holes, fifty feet across in every direction.”
Llewellyn didn’t answer, he just turned to his little crew and said, “Come, let’s get back inside.”
Flintock then apparated them all away and back to the place they called home.
“What the hell was that all about?” Llewellyn asked no one in particular.
“They are called the Abaddon,” Faraji answered, “many that see them believe it is the darkness, the lost and tormented souls of those who have departed this world who have been banished to the darkness, but they are not. Those of the darkness are led by Apollyon, the archangel of the abyss and cannot be raised until the end of time.”
“Well, how do you know that it’s not actually the darkness?”
“Because the darkness is a hot fiery pit, an abyss, where these souls burn for eternity. There is no way out until the end of time, then, and only then, they will be released for judgement by the Maker. The Abaddon we saw today have no life and are cold, very cold, so cold, that if one touched you, you would be frozen to a solid block of ice and die.”
“How do you know these things?”
“Years of study, the last twelve years or so when Muenda was not around to torment us and for Gwen and me to chase, I was not idle, I studied ancient manuscripts which go back to the beginning of time as we know it, in tongues no longer spoken, and in scripts and hieroglyphics no longer written.”
“Then who or what were they?” Llewellyn asked. The others just stood there, eyes switching from Llewellyn to Faraji as the conversation continued like they were watching a slow-motion tennis match.
“I do not know for sure, but their origins were not warm blooded, so maybe reptilian in origin, but long since dead.”
“So where did they come from?”
“According to legend, they dwelt deep within the lithosphere, close to the core, seeking warmth. Did you not come across them ever in the mines?”
“No, I didn’t, I’m pleased to say.”
“Well, they are occasionally found in the very deepest pits. They can cause rock falls in a pit because of their extreme cold making the rocks shatter. Miners who come across them are assumed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning, because of their blue lips. But it was instead the touch of the Abaddon which kills them.”
“Why have they never been reported?”
“They have, but no one takes the reports seriously, just like when miners see dwarfs, the bosses just laugh. They do not seek the company of others; they quickly flee the scene leaving no trace, apart from an occasional body.”
Jonathan interrupted him, “excuse me for asking, but, if these stories are written in languages which are no longer spoken and scripts which are no longer written, how could you interpret them?”
“Because I have knowledge beyond knowledge and sight beyond sight, power beyond power,” he said in a mysterious menacing voice, then with a glint in his eye, “and an English – Welsh dictionary.”
The last comment relieved the pent-up tension in the room and made them all smile.
Gwen decided they had all heard enough for the moment so interrupted.
“Tea and cake anyone?” she said producing said victuals out of thin air.
The conversation paused as they all tucked into the proffered provender.
Later that evening, after the teenagers had turned in for the night, the adults continued the conversation.
“I brought it to a close earlier because I didn’t want to frighten the young ones,” Gwen said, “now they’ve gone to bed, we can pool our knowledge and see what can be done for the future, and perhaps think about where they came from.”
“Well, the first question,” Llewellyn continued, “If these creatures do not like the surface or the light, what or who brought them to our doorstep? Muenda, I presume.”
“More than probably,” Faraji answered, “it takes some very dark magic to bring them up from the depths, well beyond anything Asmodeus could do, so almost definitely not him.”
“Did you notice how we recovered in ages, Thomas, the youngest first, then Glynda, Jon, me, Llewellyn and so on.” Flintock stopped short of mentioning that Gwen was the oldest apart from the obvious Faraji, “and even the dragons were affected to a lesser extent.”
“But if we meet them again, which we probably will, what will be our line of defence?” asked Flintock.
“Well, you can’t kill them, they are already dead, and have been since before we numbered the years, but we know that pure white light drives them off, we need to think how we could send a light bomb into the air as powerfully as Glynda can,” Llewellyn added.
“Or hope that Glynda is with us, which she probably will be,”
“Excuse me for butting in.”
A voice came from the corner of the room, it was Samuel, they had all forgotten he was even there.
“But I was unaffected by their magic or mind games, whatever it was, can anyone think of a way I could help? If you could bottle a light bomb, I could chuck it at them,” he said with a grin.
“If only,” said Llewellyn, “if only.”