Chapter 1
Dawn-time in Aureum… it has come already. The wilderbirds are singing their songs with malicious intent, the dense air that wafts in through my window that doesn’t quite close properly beats me in the face with its omnipresence. The rays from the sun beat down on my eyelids like an intoxicated ruffian. I am not the first to move. She is. The ghost beside me. I don’t even remember her name. The bed squeaks a symphony, reminding me of the night before. I am covered in ectoplasm.
‘Morning.’ She murmurs as she rises, her pale eyes mining through my own, her bare breasts blooming with the sun. I groan, roll over, and sigh a thousand times.
‘Not a morning person, are ya?’ she asks as she pulls robes from the ether to clothe herself. I burp up the liquor from last night, my stomach begins to churn.
‘Bucket…’ I groan as I wearily point towards my rickety door.
‘What?’ she asks.
‘Fucking buck-’ spew comes hurling out my mouth, I manage to avoid hurling on the bedsheets just in time and release my stomach contents onto the hardwood floor with such trajectory that it raises some dust. She just watches in awe.
‘Oh… bucket…’ she says stupidly, ‘I thought you said fuck it.’ I spit what’s left from my mouth towards the pile of undigested carrots and potatoes I ate from the night before, looking up at her like a defeated foe.
‘Well…’ she mutters as she holds her arms close to her bosom, ‘seeing as you now have an empty stomach, fancy some breakfast?’
‘Absolutely not.’ I respond as I pick myself up from the bed, narrowly avoiding the catastrophe on the floor. I begin coughing violently. Today of all days, the curse placed on my lungs bears a heavier burden than usual.
‘Ok… well, do you want to-’
‘Just fuck off, yeah?’ I cut the spectre off, continuing to cough and heave my lungs out of place.
’What? You think you can just fuck me and that would be the end of it? the ghost nags. ‘We talked about this last night, how you weren’t like other guys, how you would look after me…’
‘Do I look like a man that can look after you? Really? Fuck, and I thought you ghosts had far better insights than us mortals.’ I respond as I walk past her to begin dressing myself. I continue coughing, rather unpleasantly, whilst the temperature begins to drastically decrease, as all the air seems to leave the room.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ I mention as I clean the ectoplasm off myself with a towel.
‘You said we could be something.’ The woman responds, her voice beginning to distort. I feel her hair begin to creep up at the back of my neck.
‘A man says a lot of things to get his dick wet. Don’t be so fucking naïve.’ Suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, though I should have expected it, I get sent hurling across the room, through my fucking bedroom wall, landing in the nursery, on the forgotten dusty crib. It shatters. I try to quickly bring myself up again, but my spine is somewhat out of place from the impact, and my emotions are beginning to well up from the memories. All I can see is a horrifying vision of a woman once beautiful, hovering through the hole in my wall with eyes painted red, and a mouth agape. She races toward me, I run to the kitchen and grab the spirit box from the dining table as fast as I can, capturing her in it just before she has a chance to have her way with me, imprisoning the wench within it as I now begin to catch my breath. My heart is beating so fast, my lungs are grinding, and I can hear her desperate shrieks of anguish from within the box. These fucking ghosts, honestly… one night with them and they think you’re gonna be the one to set them free from their spectral prisons. I begin to go about my morning routine, cleaning the rest of the ectoplasm up, and making myself coffee before going about my day doing absolutely nothing. If Myra only knew. My shack begins to shake, a glass falls from a bench, and my kitchen window has slowly started to crack. Fucking Sky-Whales, honestly, I am so sick of these flying obese monstrosities that are only good for causing tremors, poach the lot of them I say.
To my surprise, a dragon, not a Sky-Whale, lands outside my house, scaring the crap out of my horse, with a scruffy looking rider attached to its back. Farvynn? What’s he doing in my neck of the woods? It’s almost a four hour flight from Myr. He approaches my door not long after disembarking from his flying beast.
‘You shattered one of my hand-made glasses and cracked my favourite window.’ I greet the guy. He looks past my shoulder, towards the hole in the wall, listening in on the screaming banshee I captured.
‘Still fucking around with ghosts even after receiving a curse from one, hey, my friend?’ Farvynn asks with attitude.
‘She sent me through the nursery.’ I respond.
‘Oh dear.’ Farvynn responds as he shakes his head, entering my abode without consent.
‘Your dragon isn’t gonna eat Enoch is he?’ I ask as I eye the ravenous fiend.
‘He’s a vegetarian.’ Farvynn responds. ‘You would know that if you actually listened for once.’
‘Fucking dragons are vegetarian?’ I ask with my brows raised. ‘In what world are dragons vegetarian?’
‘What, you know everything there is to know about dragons now, do ya?’
‘No, bu-’
‘You’ve raised dragons by hand, have ya?’
‘But I-’
‘They have sentience you know… they can make choices too, ya miserable prick.’ Farvynn continues with a serious tone, before breaking out into laughter after a moment of uncomfortable silence. ‘Only joking. No, he’s a carnivore, but he won’t eat horses because they taste funny. Enoch is safe.’ Farvynn continues.
‘So… why are you here?’ I ask as Farvynn walks aimlessly around the kitchen. ‘Your arse must be sore after flying all the way here from that piss-shit island Myr.’
‘Don’t bag on Myr, it’s a delicate place.’ Farvynn responds. I roll my eyes. ‘Look, in all seriousness, I’m worried about you. I really am.’ He says as he sits on my favourite chair I remodelled into a makeshift throne.
‘Who isn’t worried about me?’ I say, nonchalantly. ‘Everybody’s fucking worried about me, yet, they don’t do nothing, do they?’
‘You can’t keep claiming pity from people just because your wife and child passed away.’ Farvynn adds, making my blood begin to boil.
‘Don’t you dare bri-’
‘Save it, aye? Just save it.’ Farvynn cuts me off. ‘Yeah, I get it, it’s a right burden you carry, but no one on Nova Terrae has it easy. You know that, right? No one here is singing and dancing, everyone has some misfortune to carry on their shoulders, yet, they keep on moving on, don’t they?’
‘Yeah, well, it’s my misfortune, not theirs.’ I respond. ‘Worlds getting on just fine without me. Sun rises, empowered cats shit, sun sets, like fucking clockwork.’
‘Aye, world’s getting on fine without you…’ Farvynn says. ‘but why aren’t you getting on with the world?’ I let his words linger and permeate through the air like moulded wine. The way he said it… just so sincerely. ‘Come on, come with me.’ Farvynn continues after finalising his inspection of my crumbling abode.
‘What? Where?’ I ask.
‘Somewhere away from here.’ He continues. ‘This place isn’t doing ya any good right now. Too many bad memories.’ Farvynn walks back out towards his dragon who looks at him with a stern expression, then towards me, huffing grimly. I just stand there. ‘Ya coming or what?’ Farvynn asks. I look back to my abode, then to the spirit box, still screaming something that makes my hairs stand on end.
‘What about Enoch?’ I ask as I approach the dragon.
‘He looks like he could use a good run.’ Farvynn responds, making me raise a brow. ‘Set him free, you fuckin’ moron. S’not like anything in Aureum is anything of a challenge to him anyway. He’ll fare just fine.’
‘So, are we not coming back?’ I ask. ‘What about all my belongings?’
‘If you want to bring what’s left of your bedroom and kitchen with ya, then by all means. Otherwise, hop on, and spare me the sentiments.’ Farvynn bluntly responds. Enoch is the only thing I have left that I properly adore. Myra and I won him at a fare in town. That night flashes through my mind in a second as I stare into Enoch’s pure brown eyes. I pat him on the head, he gazes into me as if he knows what I’m about to do. I untie him, but he does not leave. ‘Maybe this’ll help.’ Farvynn says as he whips his dragon, causing it to begin to flap its gargantuan wings about, scaring the shit out of Enoch, sending him running away off into the golden hour. Aureum… a place where all other continents look on in envy with its sensual lighting and moody atmosphere… now about to be but a bittersweet memory. I climb up the dragons back and perch myself behind Farvynn. The dragon bellows out a raging fire onto my shack, burning it down in minutes. I don’t even have time to react, as not long after we begin to ascend towards the engulfing mountains that whisper my name no more, for they have long resented my presence here. I see Enoch down below, running through a field that encroaches many acres. He’s never looked happier than he does now.
*
‘Grenlock City…’ Farvynn announces as we approach Aureum’s capital. ‘what a shithole.’
‘That’s rich coming from a resident of some backwater town that has been said to be the most undesirable place to live in.’ I respond.
‘Which is why I live there.’ Farvynn responds in a boastful manner. ‘Less people, less drama, less pollution. Gorgeous. You all think Aureum is the place to be because the golden hour lasts an entire day. Meanwhile, you’re all cramped up here, breeding like rats, living in cat-box houses as airships grind overhead and spurt out messages of bullshit affirmations so you can all work harder. It’s a scam, all of it. A fucking scam. A rat is bred in a lab and is presented with an illusion of freedom before it, a piece of paper that dangles behind its window that obstructs the real world, a golden sunset, all day, every day. But that’s all it knows, because that’s what it was born into. It’s still in a fucking cage, ain’t it?’
‘I thought you were here to make me feel better?’ I ask.
‘Right now, we’re riding a thousand-pound fire-breathing beast that could dismantle a city with so much as an exhale.’ Farvynn explains.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘I hear there’s a world out there, somewhere… a world where airships are on land, kind of like our horses, but moving with wheels. I hear there’s a world out there where they bury their dead and worry not about them returning to be used as slaves, and prostitutes, and beggars. I hear there’s a world out there where they have plenty to consume, food ever at their disposal, even for the poorest of the poor. I hear, somewhere, out there… there’s a world where there is much more to explore… a world filled with more than just cities and woe, a world with history, and rage, and passion…’
‘Sounds like you need to bring us the fuck down, eh, ol’ buddy?’ I say to Farvynn, trying my best to hide my worry that he’s going to nosedive us into the city centre.
‘I’m tired of it, Mordecai. I’m tired of living in a world where anything goes, where we’ve all lost our way. I’m tired of the problems, the burdens we carry. There is so much baggage out there, so many issues that go unresolved, all because we have no idea how to move our own pride aside, never listening to the smaller man. Nova Terrae… I mean, when you think about it, what the fuck does that even mean?’ Farvynn asks.
‘How should I know? I don’t have access to literature, that’s only for Melanthaha’s kind.’ I respond.
‘Right, and that’s another thing… why are certain people in Nova Terrae allowed to read whilst others can’t? Shouldn’t knowledge be something to spread far and wide? Are they trying to keep us from thinking critically, so we don’t realise their machine is flawed? I hear in this other world, knowledge is something highly accessible, unlike this shithole.’
‘Can you just land the fucking dragon?’ I ask, now beginning to show my fear. ‘Ok, I get it… Nova Terrae is a broken mess of a world… but why are you questioning it now, thirty-thousand feet in the air? Maybe there is a different world out there, somewhere… a world where all this bullshit you’re talking about actually exists. But will that actually make you happier? The shit is browner as you approach it, Farvynn. We all want to escape, to feel something other than the harsh realities with which we are presented… but the truth is, all of us are born with holes in our souls, holes that can never be properly fulfilled. So we spend our time running about, trying our hardest to fill them with different substances and antics and whatever the fuck, but all it ever gets us is nowhere. We need to just accept the fact that the hole is there, just like how the sun rises and falls. It is a concrete fact we cannot deny, we need to live with it. Our mishaps mean nothing, because no one is watching, so let’s not take ourselves so seriously, ok?’ Farvynn doesn’t respond, instead he eyes a floating island in the distance, then grabs my hand.
‘That’s all it took, huh?’ he asks me.
‘Beg your fucking pardon?’
‘Man… and I didn’t even get to initiate the next phase. Kinda bummed about that.’ Farvynn says, beginning to chuckle. Words cannot leave my mouth. ‘Come on, let’s go get a drink. We’ve made some progress; another man of sentience has begun to unravel the truth. That’s some cause for celebration, wouldn’t you say?’ Is he for real? The dragon begins to descend towards the city, landing on the outskirts. A horse and carriage picks us up and brings us into the city centre. Farvynn leads me to my favourite pub, where I am met with every dirty look under the sun. Suddenly, the world feels a little different… it feels as if something has tapped into me, something I can’t quite put my finger on. It could just be the alcohol beginning to crawl its way into me, but whatever… apparently it’s cause for celebration, so I’m gonna do just that.…
