A.J.N.GALLAGHER

On a starlit night on the distant world of Génãrō, Winafrin C Bólgrāy sat in his rocking chair on his rooftop balcony, his tattered brown cloak wrapped tightly around him while wafts of smoke rose from his long-stemmed pipe. He mumbled to himself, gazing up to the stars, tapping an oversized, leather-bound book on his lap in time to his meditative rocking.

The balcony encompassed a glass-domed skylight at its center, the glass panes circling like segments of an orange. In one of the panes, a door led to a spiral staircase circling a central stone chimney. The glow from an open fire deep within the house cast flickering shadows through the skylight, while smoke from the chimney rose gently into the night sky, peppered with dying embers that fluttered up from the crackling fire within the bowels of the house.

The design of the multi leveled house made it difficult to know how many floors it actually had. Each room protruded haphazardly from different parts of the house, looking like they had been added by someone without the necessary skill for pursuing such an endeavor. Beams supported the outside edges of the balcony, curving inwards underneath into roughly cut holes in the sides of the house.
Dense forest surrounded the house. The trees sloping down the gentle hillside to a horseshoe-shaped bay in the distance; the bay sheltered from the open sea by a narrowing entrance that rose into cliffs at the northern end. The cliffs on either side providing protection from white-topped waves that crashed and roared beyond the idyllic cove.

Across the bay sat the sleepy fishing village of Saltwater Cove, nestled beneath forest-covered foothills that rose steeply behind it, its snow-covered peaks silhouetted in the night sky.
Lights from the township glittered across the water, joined by the stars that looked down from above. A collection of fishing boats moored in the bay gently bobbed in time with the gentle waves, accompanied by the sorrowful ringing of warning buoys in the distance. 

​

Winafrin sighed, and rested his pipe on the little table beside him, exchanging it for his thick lensed, pince-nez spectacles. His eyes squinted as he clipped them onto his nose, bringing lines to his weathered face. He unclasped the ornate metal latches on the book and began to read, muttering to himself as he struggled with the ancient text.

Winafrin wasn’t given to frustration. On the contrary, he was happy in his solitary life, alone with his Pre-fall relics, oddities, and his ‘house pets’ as he called them. All of them kept him fully occupied in his day-to-day life, but the prophetic writings of Tréndãr Obfôrlín had become his lifelong obsession since the day he found the book within the ruins of a Pre-fall monastery whilst fleeing a pack of Rark in his youth. From that day forth, he dedicated his life to revealing the answers within its sacred volume, answers that came slowly, if at all. He had uncovered secrets of the history of Genaro and discovered things that had lain dormant for thousands of years, things that he had not seen firsthand, but knew they were there. He liked the safety and comforts of his home too much to venture beyond the borders of Saltwater cove. Glintwater, in the Lakelands, was the farthest he had ventured, to the south and of course the Highland Temple, but that was in his youth, so no, here is where he had made his life, so here is where he would stay. 

One day he would pass on what he had learned, when the time was right. A bibliophile like himself, but young and adventurous, unlike him. An apprentice maybe. Someone to carry on his legacy. He could write to the Highland Temple for someone, but they were, so… so temple like. Their heads in the clouds like their temple that rose above the midlands valley, nestled against the rocky escarpment mountains, looking down over the valley, looking down over those that lived below them. No! he would need to find someone else to fulfill his dream. Someone would arrive when the time was right to carry on with his work. Things always had a way of working out. That much he knew, the teachings of Tréndãr Obfôrlín were clear on that. 

Winafrin always hoped he would play a small part in the prophesy to come, or at least uncover the secrets hidden within the volumes of his book, to pass on to those born for a greater purpose, for good of course, but the pages that referred to it were still a mystery. All he knew was that it had been a thousand years since the fall, and a thousand years was when the prophecy was to come. He was running out of time. 

With a sigh, Winafrin continued his search, running his finger over the words as he read. Without lifting his head, he reached out across the table, his fingers walking across the table in search for his pipe, avoiding some of the more unseemly items along the way. Before long, great clouds of gray smoke billowed around his face, lingering in his bushy eyebrows before being whisked away into the clear night air.

His finger paused, and he tapped at the curiously wide gaps between the words. It was these words, or the lack of them, that was the cause for his frustration. He knew the gaps were the key, but no matter the means he employed to reveal them, the gaps remained obstinately blank. 

He took another draw of his pipe, feeling the pipe’s ceramic lip roll around his tongue, letting the smoke linger in his mouth before slowly releasing it, practicing the smoke rings he had never managed to perfect. His efforts turned into a coughing fit as he inhaled the smoke the wrong way. His eyes bulged as he gasped for breath, his spectacles falling into the folds of his cloak as he pounded his chest and almost losing the oversized book from his lap.

“I think I need to give this up, he said, laying the pipe on the table beside him and wiping the tears from his eyes with the side of his sleeve. He re-clipped his spectacles to his nose and, with a sigh, closed the book, but as he did so, something caught his attention.

A soft glow began to emanate from within the page. 

Winafrin opened the book and saw embossed white words appearing in the spaces between the words he had read so many times before, flowing as if an invisible hand were writing them as he watched. He ran his fingers over the page and felt them tingle as they formed beneath his hand.
His eyebrows furrowed as he pondered why the words had suddenly appeared. Nothing had changed, at least as far as he could tell. A quick look to the night sky revealed nothing out of the ordinary. It was the same night sky he had sat under since he was a boy, so whatever was causing the words to appear was beyond his sight. Not that this would have taken much effort… his eyes weren’t as sharp as they used to be. A point he didn’t like to admit, least of all to himself. 

Maybe it was magic? Not that he believed in magic. He was a man of science and study. Everything had a reason and a reason for everything. He would find the answer to this new riddle. He always did, but not now, not tonight. Tonight, he would find the answer to his life’s work. Tonight, he would finally solve the riddle that had haunted him for most of his life.

Like a child opening a present for the very first time, he began to read, his smile widening as the words unveiled before him on the page. 

After a moment, Winafrin stopped reading, his smile fading as his face lost all expression. “Oh, my…” he said, then reread the passage in case he was wrong.

“Oh, my indeed…” he said when he confirmed he wasn’t. “Well, that will make things interesting.” He pulled a bulky front-of-breast timepiece from beneath his oversized robe, the timepiece whirring and clicking as he opened the lid. Numerous dials and cogs spun at different speeds, the gauges showing more than just telling the time.

“Oh, my…” He said, as his suspicions were confirmed. “No time at all” He looked to the stars, squinting as he searched the night sky, but the stars looked back with a nonchalant disconcern. “Well, that just will not do,” he said with mild frustration. “If only there was a way too…” His eyes smiled beneath his oversized spectacles. “Of course!” With a groan, he cast the book aside onto the table beside him, unaware of the crunch from the pipe as it was crushed beneath its weight.

With the agility more akin to someone with fewer years under their belt, Winafrin sprang to his feet and raced down the circling stairs. He reached the landing on the next floor and tripped and rolled headlong into one of the open doorways. Sounds of shouting and crashing emanated from the room before Winafrin reappeared a moment later, brushing extraneous items from his robes. With a sigh, he straightened his robe, readjusted his spectacles, and, with his remaining dignity he had, continued his descent.

Winafrin’s house was a veritable den of antiquities. Pre-fall relics and ancient books filled shelves lining the circling staircase. On the lowest floor, wall sized bookcases spanned between the numerous levels to the ceiling, accessible by bookshelf ladders or teetering narrow walkways that circled each floor. 

An astronomical mobile hung from beams that spanned the opposing walls, turning lazily as if some unseen mechanism kept it in time to some unseen clock. Scattered about the floor, teetering stacks of books rose like towering mazes, while others that had toppled like dominos covered charts and maps buried beneath layers of lifelong study.

A small bulge shuffled its way under one of the charts on the floor. The bulge reached the edge of the chart, and in a flash of brown fur, vanished beneath the adjacent chart, the bulge continuing on as it made its way to the far side of the room. Other shapes lurked in the flickering firelight, but scurried deeper into the shadows, retreating from Winafrin’s approaching steps as he made his way down the spiraling staircase.

Perched high on the stairwell, tucked away on its nesting shelf, sat Feeb, Winafrin’s Waddock. His elongated body resembling more like a furry rugby ball than a mammalian bird.

Feeb’s single bulbous bloodshot eye glared sleepily at Winafrin, his head slowly swiveling almost on itself as Winafrin navigated the stairs. 

Feeb was more than a little irritated at being woken from its slumber, which was most odd for a Waddock since they are nocturnal, their highly attuned ears and shrieking squark, perfect for warning of unwelcome guests, or welcomed ones for that matter. Feeb had changed his sleeping pattern to suit his master’s nocturnal tendencies, a decision that had left him, more frequently than not, on the short end of the deal. A decision he came to regret but was committed to fulfilling while his master was alive.

Waddock’s are a temperamental creature, choosing their masters in a way that is void of rhythm or reason, but a Waddock always has a reason, even if not recognized by the masters they choose. Winafrin was not Feeb’s first master, and he would not be his last. He had outlived several masters before him, a fact Winafrin was blissfully unaware of. Winafrin was even unaware of the longevity of a Waddock, even with all his knowledge, a fact that would never be revealed. For the simple reason, Waddock’s do not talk.

Soon after coming into Winafrin’s service, Feeb soon realized Winafrin was mostly a nocturnal creature like himself, so after several months of sleepless nights, Feeb opted to accommodate his new master’s needs, and conditioned himself to sleep at night, although with Winafrin’s noisy, and clumsy disposition, Feeb rarely got the sleep he deserved.

 

 Feeb yawned, his mouth opening like a flip top head, revealing rows of needle-like teeth. He licked his lips, a slender blood red tongue running over his slender teeth. With a sigh, it fluffed its fur, revealing tiny wings with leathery undersides, then nestled back down. With one last bloodshot look at Winafrin, Feeb closed its eye. Its pointed leathery ears continued to twitch and swivel to follow Winafrin, the ears flinching to the occasional crash and exclamation from Winafrin as he continued his descent.

Winafrin reached the second floor and stopped to catch his breath. He rested against one of the open doorways, taking the time to remove the last of the extraneous items he had the misfortune of collecting on his hurried descent. He straightened himself up and picked up a slubwax lantern hanging from the wall and entered the darkened room. 

Winafrin weaved his way through the forest of shelves piled with relics to the far end of the room, watched from the recesses by pairs of blue-green eyes that blinked away from sight in the lamp’s yellowy light. “I really must bring some order to this room, mumbled Winafrin to himself, if Feeb is going to have a hope of dislodging those Skreet.” 

A Skreet appeared in front of him, perched on an outcrop of energizer shafts, momentarily blinded by the light from Winafrin’s lamp. Its long-tail and furry body about the size of Winafrin’s fist. It stared blankly down its long pointed nose while Winafrin gave the Skreet a pat on its head, feeling its soft downy fur under his hand. The Skreet crooned, then recovering from its daze, gave Winafrin a hiss before scurrying down the shaft to join the other pairs of blue-green eyes peering from the shadows. 

“Well… Maybe a bit longer will be alright,” said Winafrin with a hint of sadness. “To give them a chance to find a new home. Besides… they don’t do that much damage.”

  Winafrin found what he was searching for buried beneath an assortment of solar chargers at the far end of the room. A long sea chest with symbols engraved in the sides of the lid.

He groaned as he kneeled down beside the chest, his aged legs creaking as he kneeled on the hardwood floor. Winafrin wished he had done the exercise he had always promised himself he would do, but never seemed to find the time to. ‘Tomorrow he would start,’ he thought to himself. But tomorrow never quite seemed to arrive. Winafrin hung his Slubwax lantern from an overhanging relic above the chest and wiped the dust from the latch with his sleeve.

 
The lid opened with a loud creak, broken only by the clatter of assorted relics as they slid to the floor. Squeals erupted from behind the chest as Skreet’s scurried away into the darkened recesses of the room.

 
“Marvelous!” Said Winafrin, carefully lifting the Electrascope relic from its bed and holding it up to the lantern light. Dried grass and Skreet fur drizzled to the floor as he held it up.

‘‘Hmmm…” said Winafrin, seeing the remains of Skreet nest in the bottom of the chest, and a Skreet sized hole at the back. “Maybe it is time for them to go. I so do hope it still has enough power?”

 
Winafrin took a deep breath to blow off some of the grass, inadvertently inhaling a mouthful. He coughed and sneezed, dropping the priceless relic and knocking the lantern from its perch, plunging himself into darkness, the room filling with blue-green eyes like twinkling stars from the onlooking Skreet’s, as he fumbled to relight the lantern.

“Well... that was most unexpected.” He said to himself. He adjusted his spectacles and looked over the Electroscope for damage. “You need to be more careful in the future.”

 
With a groan, Winafrin picked himself up off the floor and carefully tucked the Electrascope under his arm, then lent against one of the shelves for support while his circulation returned to his legs. “I really need to get some more exercise,” he said to a pair of blue-green eyes perched on the shelf in front of him. Once the pins and needles dulled to a background level he headed out the door and up the staircase, humming to himself as he went, shaking the last of the pins and needles from his feet, watched with curiosity by blue-green eyes from the darkened recesses of the relic filled room.

​

Winafrin sat the Electrascope on the little table beside his chair and flicked a switch near its base. 
The Electrascope began to move, and Winafrin’s eyes grew wide beneath his thick spectacles.
Arms appeared from the sides, transforming into legs that raised it off the table to point up at the sky. The ends of the Electrascope extended like a telescope while a panel folded out of the side near the base, revealing a keypad. With cautious trepidation, Winafrin translated the symbols from the book to the keypad, nervously adjusting his spectacles as he pawed over each symbol. The Electroscope whirred and hummed as it aligned to each tentative keystroke. 

Winafrin stood back as he pressed the last keystroke and held his breath, waiting expectantly for the Electroscope to settle into its final position. After a moment’s silence, the Electroscope let out a short beep and a viewing lens extended from the side while a small red light at the base of the keypad sat blinking at him.

Winafrin removed his spectacles and peered excitedly into the lens. 

“Ooof…” said Winafrin as he backed away from the lens, squeezing his eyes shut with his finger and thumb. His eyes blinded by the light-bug resting on the top of the Electrascope. 

“Shoo!” said Winafrin, waving the light-bug away, not sure which were the light bug or the white spots in his eyes. Once the white spots subsided, he carefully checked the lense for any other interlopers and cautiously looked through the lens once more.

 
He scanned the night sky for some time, his excitement waning the longer he looked. There were no planets, objects, comets or stars of any kind. It was the most uninteresting part of space he had ever seen. 

“Hmm,” He said, folding his arms into his enormous sleeves, feeling more than just a little disappointed.
He keyed in the coordinates one more time, in case he missed something, but the Electrascope remained motionless. With nothing left to try, he stared through the lense once more, grunting to himself in increased frustration. After a few moments, he gave up and stormed off in frustration to stare out over the balcony.

His frustration began to wane as he looked out towards Saltwater Cove. He always found it calmed him, not that he got frustrated much. Well… that wasn’t entirely true, but he always seemed to find the answers to his most gnarliest questions while his mind emptied of its perplexity. There was something about looking out across the distant bay while the moonlight danced on the water shimmering waves, twinkly like a blackened mirror filled with a thousand stars from above, the sound of the waves gently rolling along the beach before drawing back in their hypnotic motion.

Winafrin closed his eyes, drawing in the sounds and smells of the ocean carried along on the summers breeze, mixed in with the forest around him, peppered with the soulful hoots and peeps from nocturnal Tree Buryl’s as they called to their young within the forest canopy. 

He didn’t hear the Electrascope emit a beep and a red light flash in time with each beep. It wasn’t till the third beep that he was pulled from his myriad of frustration. His eyebrows furrowed as he searched for the unfamiliar sound, looking over the balcony and surrounding forest, and even up into the night sky as he listened to the illusive source.

He took off his spectacles and cleaned them, finding more grim than he expected. He held them up to the moonlight for inspection, but in the reflection, saw a red flash. 

​

He turned around and nearly dropped his spectacles as the Electrascope beeped again. A small red light flashed in time with the beep. He hurried to the Electrascope and excitedly peered through the viewing lens, his heart pounding in his head, his hand shaking as he leaned in to see what he had been searching for all his life.

For a start, he saw only darkness, and his heart sank within him. He was about to turn away when a pinprick of twinkling light appeared through the lens. The light began to grow, turning into a swirling maelstrom that thundered and flashed angrily.

Its center bulged, pregnant with darkened malice, then exploded in a flurry of escaping gas and fury.
A white capsule shot from its center, streaking across the night sky like a shooting star, as if fleeing from what lay within. The swirling maelstrom that gave birth to it collapsed in on itself until nothing was left but the darkness of space.

​

“Oh, dear.” Said Winafrin, as he stepped back from the Electroscope and adjusted his spectacles.
Moments later, the capsule was streaking across the night sky with a deafening roar, its tail turning fiery-red as it entered the atmosphere.

 
“Oh, my…” said Winafrin as it passed overhead, the light from its flaming tail reflected in his spectacle lenses, as it continued on over the forest to the south. Silence fell over the forest once more as the departing smokey tail dissipated into the gentle breeze. 

He was silent for a moment, then with a look of someone whose life long academia had just become a reality, said, “Ohhh dear…” 

He removed his spectacles and slowly wiped the smudges off with his cuff of his cloak, then with a sigh, clipped them back onto his nose. He gave one last lingering look to the south, his eyes looking wider than usual through the thick lenses. “I better get ready”! He headed for the stairs, but paused and readjusted his spectacles. “But first, he said, clicking his lips, I’d better have a pot of tea… he headed down the stairs, his foot step’s echoing behind him as he went.

​

****

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Hoots and whistles drifted over the balcony on the warm, gentle breeze. Leaves rustled and shimmered in the moonlight on the surrounding trees, while the waves crashed on the shore in the distance.

The breeze toyed with the pages of the book, finally turning the page in one mighty gust. A fearful image and inscription lay bare on the page. The words beneath illuminated as before. The words too frightening to look upon, their meaning too fearful to utter except by those that longed for them to be fulfilled.

 
Within moments, the illuminated words began to fade, but not before another gust caught the page and turned it back to the one Winafrin had been reading. A stillness fell over the forest and the rustling leaves stopped, as if the very breeze held its breath. Then there was nothing, not even the sounds of the waves in the distance.

The Electrascope began to beep…

If someone had been looking through the Electrascope’s lense at that moment, they would have seen another Maelstrom appeared, but this time, violent and angry, blood-red with the fury of unfettered rage. The center erupted in a flurry of igniting gas. An ember-red comet burst through it, a dark red tail of smoke and flame trailing behind it, hurtling it towards the planet in a crazed rage as if pursuing the first comet. 

In its fury, a piece broke off in a shower of sparks. The comet careered violently to the east in a blazing trail of furious red smoke, while the smaller section continued on to the south.

 
Deep within the house, sounds of crashing and squawking masked any sound as the object passed overhead as Winafrin tried to bring peace to another one of his unfortunate events. But outside, there were others… others who had waited in shadowed silence, who heralded its coming as the sign that the evil that was long thought dead would arise, and the darkness that was foretold would come had begun.

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