What Manner of Man: Chapter 34 🦇

And he drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.

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Undated.

The wind picked up and carried the smoke from the burning manor, smothering all the visible world in a haze of sulfurous darkness. The occasional shocks and convulsions from underground were coming more frequently and getting worse. However used a man might be to the rocking of a ship on stormy seas, solid earth doing much the same is an extremely disconcerting sensation.

Sylvia looked fixedly up at the place where that thing which clung to the bell tower over our heads — like a gargoyle come to life — was crossing blades with Danny. The whole tower shivered and quaked ominously amid the general upheaval.

With a crash that started a ringing in my ears, I felt myself being yanked back away from the structure. Stunned, I found myself looking dazedly at a pile of rubble where I'd been standing a moment before. Sylvia fell back, clutching her bad arm and wincing from the effort of pulling me out of harm's way. Part of the wall had almost come down right on our heads.

In all my experience of her, Sylvia had never looked so lost or overwhelmed by a situation. That was nothing compared to the condition of the others, though. In their panic, about as many had run toward as away from the point of danger — especially those who had gone down to the old harbor. Any breaking up of the cliff — only a matter of time, with all this quaking of the ground — would be sure to bury them alive. Still Sylvia hesitated, suffering agonies amid the warring demands upon her.

“There’s nothing you or I can do for Danny,” I told her, indicating the scattered villagers, “They’re the ones who need you now. They listen to you — you can get them organized, get them out of here.” 

However she didn’t welcome the words, she couldn’t deny it was the truth. She bade me promise to stand watch, ready to do anything that might be done for Danny. This done, a powerful jolt rocked me back, and by the time I recovered myself she had gone.

The stark whiteness of the beast stood out plain and uncanny against the dark stone of the tower wall — somehow awful, like a blank space on the world. The thing was rapidly ascending the north bell tower, crawling like some monstrous reptile. It was difficult even to fix one’s eyes upon — one moment seeming to take the shape of a man, the next a monstrous bat.

Still carrying the weapon Sylvia had dropped, there was distinctly human cunning in his motions. He swarmed up the crumbling edifice, peering into the many gaping mouths of broken stone and high-arched windows, thrusting at his pursuer with the heavy blade Sylvia had dropped. There was no sign of Ardelian.

The blazing inferno was closing in on either side, consuming the north and south wings of the house. The courtyard, where none now remained beside myself, was rapidly beginning to resemble a scene out of the Book of Revelations. The shaking of the earth had increased such that what ought to be solid took on the quality of water; the ground seemed almost to tumble and roll like the sea. The whole structure began to shake apart, sending great pieces of it crashing to earth. A stone’s throw from where I stood, a great black pit opened suddenly where once had been solid ground. Caverns and tunnels that ran below the manor were beginning to cave in, swallowing great swaths of the courtyard.

I hastened to retreat from the danger as far as I could, taking up a position on the far side of the towers. There I stood my ground, as I was bound to remain in sight of the place as long as possible. A gust of wind knocked me back with a blow as solid as if it had been from a fist. I was glad to have cleared the area of immediate danger as next there came a cataclysmic roar and a gale of smoke that left me blind and deaf. My lungs burned and I nearly chocked with coughing.

My ears rang with a haunting, impossible sound — a single, powerful note, sonorous and metallic amid the din. When my vision cleared I saw that part of the tower which held the duelers had fallen clear away, and one of the great, bronze bells lay half embedded in the earth.

Thereafter, I witnessed events rather in the manner of a distant shadowplay. 

Through the jagged diagonal line of broken stone, miraculously, I could make out all three figures still standing high above partly on the exposed staircase and an unsound-looking platform; all that remained of the floor of the uppermost tower chamber. Near this high point, the the white figure and Danny could be seen with blades crossed, locked in an exchange of blows. A ways below, climbing steadily upward, I was relieved to see Ardelian alive and whole.

Between each lunge, thrust, and parry, even from this distant vantage point I could see the beast seem to swell and transform at an accelerating pace. Whatever tenuous grasp the thing had kept on his humanity, the last of it was rapidly slipping away. He began to return more and more of Danny’s blows with wild jabs of his claws in favor of the sword. His violence lost all appearance of strategy. 

As they reached the platform at the top, he seemed to grow impatient with having to find a way to keep his grip on his sword with his twisted and bestial hands. He thrust the weapon aside in frustration and reared to his full height.

The force of his lunge was enough to precipitate a hail of stones, but Danny danced around him, as nimble and precise as the beast was brutal. He thrust at her with enough momentum to lift her bodily off the ground, and between his jaws snapped her slender blade like a twig. She landed hard, falling precariously near the edge of the platform — but then, just as the beast was poised to leap again, the third figure arrived.

Some manner of confrontation followed between the three of them, the tension palpable even at so great a distance. Ardelian insinuated himself between the beast and its prey, leaving Danny room to scramble to her feet. She took up Sylvia’s fallen sword, and a violent argument passed between the three which was drowned by the distance and howling wind. 

Danny lunged one final time at the monster, but as she did so Ardelian threw himself upon the blade. I could not see where she struck. I had a fleeting impression of what seemed two minute, metallic glimmers — so small I might have imagined them — falling from the tower. Ardelian folded like a crushed flower, buckling at the knees, and the creature caught him. Danny stood as if turned to stone, the sword falling from her hand.

The upheaval of the earth suddenly doubled in strength. It felt as if something deep beneath my feet was violently trying to break free. Behind me, the other bell tower began to collapse in flames, throwing off missiles of stone and flaming timber. There was a moment’s hesitation while something passed between Danny and the creature. Vane pushed her towards the stairway. She fled.

It was none too soon; I was certain the cliff was about to give way. As soon as she made it to open ground, I caught Danny by the arm to bring her to Sylvia. Behind us came a terrible, deep, and monumental wail of rending stone. 

It should have been full morning by now, with the sun high overhead, but above Whithern Hall there was only darkness. The dawn had been beaten back. Night reigned, a night with stars of red-glowing ash.

Looking back, I saw the burning shape of Whithern Hall shudder, and, with a groan, give forth. Its walls of ancient stone opened like wilting petals, their wooden bones consumed. A shiver ran through the whole, and it all seemed to sigh as the last of the roof sagged inward and breathed out a great pillar of flame. Through its heart, there cut a black crevasse, racing like jagged lightning to meet the cliff.

I caught a final glimpse of a pair of figures atop the tower, locked in an embrace, silhouetted against the flames. Then a final convulsion wracked the land and all came crumbling down — swallowed by the waiting sea.

Blessed solstice, darling reader. (In case you’re worried, this is not the final chapter of What Manner of Man.)

-St John

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