Paragon City is awash with heroes with marvellous powers and brightly coloured costumes. Yet there are those whose deeds do not fall under the spotlight, who remain unknown to journalists and TV reporters, whose efforts are no less important in the everlasting fight against evil and injustice.
There was something amiss with the sunrise in Paragon city this morning. Sunrise? The morning didn't happen. The night of Hallowe'en seemed unwilling to end. People found themselves trapped, unable to leave the city. A perpeptual midnight had cloaked the city.
A few of the more mystically capable pointed towards Crotoa, claiming they felt strange disturbances in the mystical ebb and flow of one of the most prominent nexus points of the ley lines which run through Paragon.
Whilst this Earth is not the one of my birth, my stay here has been long enough to have attuned myself to such flows. Croatoa indeed seemed to be the centre of the problem. Eochai was travelling abroad again, as he had done on a previous halloween, sightings of the giant Fir Bolg being reported in several districts. Jack In Irons, too, had somehow been able to manifest himself beyond the magical wardings that had been placed about Croatoa.
So I made my way to there. Such was the unpredictability of the magical energies in which Croatoa was steeped, I was unsure of what I might discover, or even if I could uncover anything to unlock the mystery. By careful questioning of contacts I have befriended in the town of Salamanca and beyond, even some information gleaned from the spirit of Warwitch herself, I slowly pieced together the tale you are about to read.
The events concern that of a young teenage girl, not yet fifteen years of age. I will not disclose her name here, for the safety of her family and friends. Picture her wearing the black of the Ravenwing order, though her training has not yet even seen her earn the rank of Initiate, or the right to wear the pointed hat which marks out the cabal.
It is but two nights before Hallowe'en, approaching dusk. She waits quietly in one of the large barns in Croatoa, glancing out every now and then from her chosen hiding place behind a stack of barrels, waiting for her friend. She is quite plain looking, save for some freckles over the
bridge of her nose, and she has long dark hair which she curls about her forefingers when she is nervous, as she is now.
The two of them met a few months ago, at the edge of a Cabal meeting. He was the first of his kind she had seen. Despite his odd appearance, and rusky voice, the two developed an almost immediate kinship. Both were at the outskirts of their respective orders - she having been barely accepted into the Cabal, he a young soldier-in-training. They listened together to things spoken between the head Maven's of the Cabal present and the Fir Bolg representives, though little they heard they could comprehend.
So the two spoke of other matters, of the life they knew, and from it each came to some understanding of the other. They came from a world apart, yet family and friends seemed
important to both human and fir bolg, as did a sense of humour and justice. She enjoyed those conversations with him, mundane and far from the troubles that seemed to so plague Croatoa.
A couple of weeks previously, they had overheard a conversation which had put them both at unease. It was only by chance they had been present - a secluded spot at the edge of the wood east of town, beneath the boughs of an old oak, where the two friends had paused for some lunch.
There was no mistaking the voices of those approaching - full of bitterness and hate. Redcaps, a group of them. They'd seen such before, at a careful distance, and the horrible goblin-like things exuded an air of malicious evil, deriving a twisted sense of fun from inflicting pain and suffering upon others - even other redcaps. The larger ruled their smaller kindred by nature of their innate cruelty.
The pair listened to the redcaps from concealment. Fear numbed her limbs, as she took in what the evil creatures spoke of. They mentioned a ritual to plunge the whole city, and eventually the whole world, into a nightmarish existence, pulling on the collective unconciousnesses of every human mind. Whilst details of the ritual itself were lacking, the vivid descriptions the redcaps spun of what they hoped to achieve, intermersed with gleeful laughs, chilled her to the bone.
The redcaps eventually moved on, yet is was several more mintues before either of the friends dared move themselves. They made their way back to Salamanca from the edge of the Misty Wood to find a safer spot to discuss the frightening matter at hand.
Neither felt confident enough to bring what they heard to their respective superiors, expecting to be ignored largely due to their youth and inexperience. They had no details about the ritual the redcaps planned with which to reinforce their story.
Each agreed they had to gain more knowledge before they could present any sort of appeal to their elders. They had but one lead to go upon - a name they had heard the redcaps mention in lowered tones that suggested they held him in awe or fear or, more likely, both. Skinflint.
They then eavesdropped on talks within and between the Cabal and the Fir bolg, and when either dared, on Redcaps and the Tuatha de Dannon. A few days later, finally, her fir bolg friend overheard of a fight between the Tuatha and a bunch of redcaps led by one called Skinflint that had gone very badly for the green-furred warriors, and where this fight had taken place.
So she had agreed to meet with her friend here in the barn, after he had checked out a possible lair of Skinflint. She had 'borrowed' a couple of magical potions of invisibility from the shelves of one of the Cabal's Maven's who was out somewhere to the north, intent on accompanying him at first, but he convinced her it was better he went alone - if something went wrong, he had argued, his spirit would return to the fey, and eventually he could manifest again here after recuuperating, whilst she had but one life in this world.
"Expecting someone?"
It was hard to imagine something as large as the creature beside her could move so stealthily. The redcap was taller than any she had seen, a towering monster whose yellow-toothed grin was suddenly the focal point of her gaze, before a thud against the ground temporarily drew her attention to a small ceramic vial which the redcap had thrown at her feet.
One of the invisibility potion vials she had taken. She was too terrified to run, her heart feeling like it had stopped in her throat. "My name, in case you had not guessed, is Skinflint," said the redcap with a mock flourishing bow, confirming her fears, before he continued on.
"Your little pumpkin friend won't be coming. He snuck snuckity snucked in to my place bold as brass buttons, but oh, we saw him, we did," grinned the huge redcap, leaning down closer til she felt his foul breath on her face. "We did," chorused some of the other redcaps who had fallen in behind him, their mirthless laughter turning her blood cold.
"Redcap eyes sharp as knives," Skinflint said, the short rhyme echoed by his followers.
"Trying to filch our secrets, that wouldn't do, wouldn't do at all. What did he know already? Whom had he told what he knew? We had to find out, and we found out, oh yes. Fir bolg not have many places to feel pain, but we Redcaps are ever so good at finding the way to hurt best. He told us. He told us everything he had spied and heard whilst he had been sneaking about my caves. Even where you would be a-waiting, here, before his life gave out."
Her heart sank again at the news that her friend was gone, bringing fresh tears to her eyes.
"You humans be much more fun - lots of pieces have you to snip and slice. Pull you apart bit by bit, peeling back skin, dicing up flesh, stringing up innards about like decorations. All still alive. You shall be entertainment for many a day and night as Hallowe'en approaches."
She shuddered, her back pressing tighter against the wooden panneling against which the redcaps had her trapped.
"The thirteenth hour will be Paragon's final hour. That dark hour, repeated over and over, all trapped in the shadow twilight of nightmares and horrors. Glorious it will be! Through the eternal anguish we shall be watching and laughing in revelry. We'll jape and jig to songs of woe! Raise toasts to tales of misery!"
The ritual is near complete - and to think that a tiny parcel of flesh and bone such as you and your fir bolg friend thought to interfere! That would never do. We can't have that, can we?"
He waved forward a pair of the larger redcaps behind him, who produced long loops of thick braided rope intertwined with barbed wire.
She closed her eyes, slowly sinking to her knees as redcap laughter rang around her. Then a bright flash, which she saw even through her lowered eyelids, and a near-deafening clap of thunder turnt malicious laughter into angry shouts and curses.
The redcaps suddenly found themselves facing a small army of her lost friends kin, some of them standing taller than Skinflint. Hovering above the now charging Fir Bolg were several of the Cabal, several of whom she knew to be Maven's. Lightning arced and bales of hay and barrels were scattered, burning. Redcaps met their attackers with vicious fury, Skinflint shouting defiantly as he faced the odds arrayed against him.
The fight was short, and the half-dazed and still trembling girl found herself gently brought to her feet.
"You have apparently caused quite a fuss," said the Thunder Maven who led the witches present to her. She explained that they had recently discovered that Skinflint, a redcap whose evil mischiefs were notorious, had moved to a lair somewhere near Salamanca. They had been quietly observing the comings and goings from Skinflint's new abode for several days now, and she was surprised and concerned to have a report delivered that a lone small fir bolg had entered the caverns in question.
Several hours later, Skinflint himself had left the caverns with a large group of redcaps in tow. In that time, the Maven had gathered a small contingent of the Cabal and made contact with the Fir Bolg asking them to bring a force to aid them.
"Tell me what you know, child. Skinflint obviously had a bone to pick with you," the Thunder Maven said, kneeling to listen to the girls story.
"I wish you had brought this to our attention sooner, but thats by the by. We may have left dealing with Skinflint far too late to stop this ritual without your actions, and this ritual must be stopped. You and your fir bolg friend have done well, all said and done."
The powerful ritual weaved by the Redcaps was broken, and although its residual effects were felt during the long Hallowe'en that followed, the Cabal were able to restore things with the aid of those heroes and even villains in the Rogue Ilses whose collection of costume pieces over that time served a higher purpose that many will ever know. Serving as Foci that had each been touched by the aura's of a being with destiny, the Cabal had collected enough to reinforce the magical wards and keep the Redcaps from joining in the 'festivities' outside of Cabal.
And so this tale ends, yet I still have something to add.
When you gaze up at the statues of prominent heroes and heroines whose adventures are praised and well told, pause for a thought to those who go unknown, for this little girl and her fir bolg friend - whose tale I have pieced together here - are but two of many whose courage yet remain unsung.
Stela, Earth Enchantress.
