Goodbye, Goodbye

[Duffy]

Prologue
Scara Brae, the Throne Room

Her Royal Highness Queen Valeena leant forwards in her throne. With mischievous, forceful tone, she asked the question on everybody’s mind.

“I appreciate your concern Mr Brandybuck. What, however, do you expect me to do about it?”

Duffy had not thought that far ahead. In one of his typical panics, he had stormed out of his study, made his way to the city, and demanded an audience with Her Highness. The matter needed attending to. He had not yet worked out how. He shrugged. Though the queen made no threats, her charisma outmatched even the bard’s and he withered before her.

“I expected as much,” she said with a sigh. She leant back into the throne, rested her hands on the ornate arms, and looked out across the cold chamber. “I am ever the one to be called upon in dangerous times.”

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but I would normally take it into my own hands.” Duffy had. Duffy did. Not this time. “This is beyond me, though. This is beyond the troupe, or Chronicle, or mere conventional ‘heroes’.” He wished there were more of those in the world these days.

Valeena nodded appreciatory nods. She took a deep breath, symbolic more than required, and rose with grace. Beneath the weight of reams of silk, gold, and lace, she descended the stairway to the audience floor. The silence in the room intensified. With swagger, she circled the bard, knelt on the floor in piety and respect.

“I am confused, somewhat.” She stopped behind him, rested a hand on his shoulder, and tried not to smile at his discomfort. “Are you not the Duffy Brandybuck?” There was doubt in her question, but Duffy could not be sure if it was malicious, or considerate.

“I am, Your Highness,” he said. His tongue ran over a piercing, trying to keep his lips moist, and his concentration honed.

“Then,” she lifted her hand away, “are you not a hero you speak so fondly of?” She walked around to his front, completing her circle. She stared down at him, and beneath that stare, Duffy felt himself compelled to look up.

“I…,” he stumbled. He had not considered himself heroic. He had never seen himself a hero. He had only done what was required. “I…don’t think I can amount to your expectations.”

Valeena turned her face into a frown. She was on her own, and without her council, she was hesitant and cautious. She was disappointed, but she had expected as much. Few people on the island would confess to being better than its queen was.

“You above all others are qualified to contend with this dilemma. I cannot say I am fond of the notion, but, if the Molyneux Edict is the source of this problem…” She trailed off, hoping not to have to put it to words. When Duffy continued, she smiled with unspoken thanks.

“It will be a step in the right direction, Your Highness. With the edict abolished, maybe peace will reign.”

[Duffy]

Goodbye, Goodbye

Sequel to The Restless Fugitive.

Prequel to Standing Tall.

[Duffy]

Scara Brae
House Winchester, the Noble District

“She said yes?”

Duffy sighed. He set his teacup onto the saucer, and the saucer onto the table. It clattered for a second as he sat back in his chair. The sun, for once shining onto the city, continued to bead sweat on his brow.

“You say that as if you expected me to fail.”

Ruby flinched. “Sorry. It’s just, well, she said yes.”

“Your confidence in me is inspiring,” he replied flatly.

For almost an hour, the duo had taken high tea in House Winchester’s sunroom. Once, it had been a fine example of excess. Now, the peeling paint of the white wood was a shadow of its former self, and the warped glass obscured the sun as much as it concentrated it onto their overdressed selves.

“It’s not that I lack confidence,” she leant forwards to pour another cup. “Valeena has, until today, declined every invitation to see either of us.” Not for want of trying, Ruby had attempted to garner the queen’s favour for her own, and for the troupe’s benefit. She was thus as jealous as she was surprised.

“I think ‘your city is in danger’ tends to get you noticed.”

Ruby chuckled. “Yes, well, when you put it like that I guess it was to be expected.” She set the teapot down, adjusted herself in her seat, and raised her cup to her lips. “Still…”

“Moving on,” he grumbled, “we need to discuss our plan of action.”

“We have a plan?” She rolled her eyes.

“We have a plan, yes.” Duffy’s inference drew Ruby’s gaze from the cumulus clouds languishing in the afternoon humidity. “This involves all of us, wherever or not we want it to.”

“I did not say I wouldn’t help,” she spat. “I know how important it is to Scara Brae, to you, and to us.” Her jealousy swiftly turned into contempt. Of late, Duffy’s panic attacks, and his melodrama had grown to unbearable levels. Above all, she hoped their endeavours in the coming weeks would heal Duffy Brandybuck, never mind Scara Brae.

“Then we need to make sure,” he trailed off to sip lapsang, “we agree on what to do about…” He stopped drinking. He slouched. “We need to agree on what we do if it doesn’t work.”

That eventuality, to his discredit, had weighed on him heavily.

“Hang on a minute…,” the matriarch erred. Relinquishing herself of the cup, she orated with hand movements. “You spend weeks, weeks getting an audience.” She prodded a finger at him. “You spend months, months putting together the resources needed to perform the Last Song.” Duffy flinched when a second prod directed at him. That spelt trouble.

“Ruby…,” he bemoaned. He knew what was coming.

“No. You listen to me.” She forgave herself the incivility and raised voice, and then continued to raise it. “We are going to save you. You are not going to die. Oblivion, fuck that man, will never take you away from me.”

[Duffy]

Unsure about how to proceed, Duffy turned his attention to the sunroom. In awkward silence, he began to notice all the little details he had neglected in his selfish quest for redemption. Around the room, red brick cut off at the waist, leading into a cage of white wood supporting a glass frame. He vaguely remembered watching Leopold put it up one March morning. Hirsute back glistening with sweat, unfortunate ill-fitting trousers revealing too much below the waist to the neighbours. He smiled.

“I did not realise just how homely this place is,” he said, absent minded, in a bid to break the ice.

Ruby shook her head slowly. She was certain some things went in one ear and out the other. Rather than fight, as ever she would, she turned her own attention to the room. They stared up at the clouds once they had counted the panes. Cups in hands, tea cooling, and feet crossed at the heel to ease into comfortable recline. Eventually, Duffy found the courage he had been sorely lacking for months.

“Why are we still fighting?”

It was a simple question, yet even Ruby, quick off the cuff, was at a loss for words. She looked back through the years, to each supposed ‘victory’ over Oblivion. She wondered if, and when, it would ever end. Each time they portended peace, a final resolution, another part of the Forgotten One’s ‘master plan’ slotted into place. Ruby could think of only one answer that encapsulated truth and perspective.

“Do we know how to do anything else?” She rolled her head to the left. Duffy rolled his head to the right. They stared at one another, until Duffy nodded, and Ruby smiled. “He wrote us to be exemplary, heroic, and stubborn. If anything, his demise at our hands seems almost aggrandising.”

“Yes…,” Duffy sat upright. He rubbed the top of his leg, trying to ease his shin’s dull ache without drawing too much attention to the fact it was starting to unseal. “Only a mad man could write people to life to fight for centuries, and then die at their hands because he willed it.” Everything the troupe did, after all, scribed in a motley assortment of dusty, long forgotten tomes in a long misplaced playhouse.

“If only we had those books…,” Ruby said wistfully.

Once, the troupe had searched everywhere for the tomes. They had thought themselves discovered, but in fact, they were only one chapter in their lives. It had helped them accept the eventual destruction of the Prima Vista, and the ‘death’ of the troupe as a performance unit. It had only left them with more questions than it had answered.

“Aren’t you sick of knowing what’s going to happen?” Duffy moaned. He seemed shocked at the notion. “I’ve spent years trying to act surprised when another day turns to shit.” For once, not knowing if he was finally going to die or not made life…despite the madness, sorrow, and heartache, entirely worth living.

[Duffy]

“It’s the comfort of being certain you’ll see another sunrise. That makes me get up in the morning,” Ruby replied. Her voice softened. She curled her hair around a finger in contemplation, and then did away with her tea. She slid it onto the table’s edge, rattling it noisily, and then stood.

“Admirable,” was all Duffy said in response.

Ruby moved to the double doors that lead from the sunroom out into the meagre garden. She peered through the thick ivy wall that surrounded much of the lower windows. She rekindled lost passions and desires to restoring her strawberry fields, forever and ever. She had the time now, and she had the impetus to do away with the many responsibilities forced upon her.

“We’re going to fix this, Duffy.”

Duffy looked up from the table. He traced the cross-stitch on the trail of her dress. He smirked. It was in the pattern of a phoenix, subtlety interwoven with the red fabric and the light tanned leather accents that were functional, as much as they were height of Scara Brae’s ever-fickle fashion. She really had been born anew in ‘Gehenna’.

“I’m sure we will.” He picked up his cane, which rested against the table, and wobbled upright. “I am just pessimistic in my old age.” He winced. The mere thought of weakness undid the resolve he plied against his affliction. Beneath the black trousers he wore as mark of grief and office, the white bandages reddened.

“We will,” she corrected. She did not turn around. She embraced the warmth that radiated through the glass, and closed her eyes. She took a deep, veiled breath. Hoping, pleading, and praying to see a change in Duffy’s outlook.

The bard nodded grimly. He knew what she was trying to do. He would not fall for her folly, or undo it. He tapped his cane on the flagstones. He tested its weight, hobbled to the open stable door, and started back into the farmhouse kitchen that tended to the Winchester household. He took a deep breath, and then caught wind of the poppy seed buns Ruby had put in the aga’s roaring womb for when the others returned from the docks. He smiled.

“Let’s tend to the last supper, first of all. If I make it through the night, we can see about putting a smile back on this tired old face.”

Ruby turned slowly. She smiled, though a smile of acceptance, and not happiness. She folded her arms before her, and walked lady-like through the sunroom to the doorstep. Duffy waved inside, and she followed without a slip of form. The warmth of the sunroom soon faded, replaced with the dusty and stagnant air of a well-used altar to domesticity.

“I guess that’s compromise enough,” she said glibly. She pointed to the far door when they were well and good indoors, and Duffy made to open it. “Fetch the plates we used at Lillith’s wedding, and then start chopping the cure ham, would you?”

[Duffy]

Ruby was not sure where Duffy learned to prepare meat and vegetables. She was not sure she wanted to know. After several minutes of awkward fumbling, she slammed down her knife, jolted about, and made to berate him. Then she realised what she was about to do, and exhaled.

“I…Duffy. That is enough ham my dear.” She picked up her knife again, slowly, surely, and steadily. “Care to fetch the apples in from the larder?”

Without argument, he limped through to the food stores. Ruby immediately burst into tears. She tempered them with the hem of her sleeve, but could not help sobbing between sniffles.

“Ruby?” he asked, listening in the larder with one ear raised.

“These damned onions!” she shouted. She turned, jostled with the pile of vegetables, and hacked into a red onion as quickly as she could. “I hope Leopold appreciates this pie!” she added jokingly.

Duffy appeared in the door, apples in one hand, silver cane tip in the other. His stare was deadpan, and bore into the back of Ruby’s head. He grit his teeth, hesitant to cut to the chase when she was so volatile.

“Ruby…”

The kitchen’s pleasant aroma seemed insignificant now. For just a few precious minutes, all the worries that weighed down on the remnants of the troupe seemed so far away. Here Duffy was, talked out of his melancholy state, oblivious to Ruby having talked herself into one of her own.

“It will be alright…,” he whispered coarsely.

She set the knife down, very slowly, onto the chopping board. Now, she was crying through emotion and onion peel. Her make-up was already streaking, and she tapped the necklace on her bosom to conjure a glamour. In an instance, she appeared perfectly radiant, tearless, and unblemished by her cracking mask. She turned with a smile.

“Of course! The pastry is always a problem, but the filling I mastered an age ago.”

Duffy rolled his eyes. “You know full well I did not mean the Lantadyme Pie.”

“I can’t do this now.” She bit her lip, an expression she turned too far too often of late. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

Duffy crossed the kitchen floor, set the bowl down on the central table, and rested against its battered edge. He stared at the bowls of spices laid out to season the buns over which the children would fight. He tried to wash away the negativity with happy thoughts. This evening, after all, was a celebration of life lived, not death dawning.

“I want you to promise me, Ruby. Promise me you won’t say no when I ask what you know I have to ask.” His voice was sullen, trembling, and fearful. He did not look up from the ingredients to gauge her response. Somehow, he knew.

Ruby walked slowly to the Aga, donned the oven gloves, and paused with her arms tray-wide to think. She counted to ten, bent at the knee, and tinkered with the ancient, rusty handle.

[Duffy]

As she set the steaming pie onto the kitchen table, Ruby composed herself. Duffy was going to ask the redheaded matriarch to be his end. Though she had seen it decades ago in her diaries, thoughts, and dreams, it did not make it easier to accept. She expected an enemy to triumph over the bard, not his closest friend.

“Just because I saw you buried beneath a tree, don’t mean I should pick up a shovel.”

Duffy chuckled, rested his hand on his hip, and stared at the Lantadyme. It was a leek and potato pie with herbs, peppered ham, and topped with short crust pastry knots only Ruby knew how to make. It was, suffice to say, delicious. He licked his lips excitedly.

“Given the alternative, I’ll pick it up for you.”

Ruby rolled her eyes, deposited the oven gloves on the Aga rail, and picked up the largest knife from the chopping block. She pressed the tip into the centre of the pie and rotated it. It created a vent for the steam to whirl up in a twin culinary plume. It smelt, for want of a better word, ravishing.

“Say all you like, I’m not doing it.” Her glib expression left no room for doubt.

Duffy’s hope of persuading her died as the last of the morning’s sunlight faded from the kitchen’s poky windows. He began peeling potatoes to boil, butter, and basil. He let the heavy fall of his blade onto wood do the talking. He kept his eyes on the flat of the knife. They languished in silence for the best part of half an hour before they both broke nerve in unison.

“Maybe if you…”

“How about you…”

They looked at one another, furrowed their brows, and then both smiled.

“Maybe if you don’t get a god complex it won’t be so bad,” Ruby repeated, recognising the glint of submission in her friend’s eyes. “I’m just scared ascension will be the metaphorical death of our friendship, as much as your physical self.”

Duffy had considered what would happen when he became the Thayne Tantalus once more. Whilst his body as such would remain as it appeared in the here and now, he would be ethereal. His power, as potent as it was, would become phantasmal. His blade would have no impact on the world. His song would be dull and full of echoes. His legacy would become to inspire, to teach, and to impart tales of flight and fancy to needy travellers. He would sooth Scara Brae.

“Do you really think I’d abandon you, now?” He set the knife down next to the perfectly peeled pile of Maris piper. He rested his free hand on the table. He pressed down on the silver tip of his cane with the other. His leg had gone beyond aching and begun twinging with the all too familiar pain of his curse. The tension was giving life to the injury, and beneath the bandages, the scabs tore open.

[Duffy]

“Do you really think?” Duffy barked. He bit his tongue, sunk into his own stance, and cleared his throat. He tried again, this time, half-whispering. “Do you really think I’d abandon you now, Ruby?”

Ruby was not sure what she thought anymore. Sober, tired, and tested, her mind raced with all the obfuscation of a good night out. She missed the enjoyment of a good bottle of gin on supple lips. She did not like being anywhere but firmly in control.

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

With a reserved sigh, she picked up the pie. It was now cool enough to carry. She approached the windowsill. She set it on the wide frame to cool, as she had done a thousand times before. This time it felt different. The ritual of baking tarnished by odious news and the possibility of it being a last supper of sorts.

“So you won’t promise?” Duffy scooped the potatoes into a copper bowl and hobbled to the Aga. There was a pot of water waiting for them, bubbling away at the boil. He dropped them in at arm’s length with one hand, and then set about seasoning the water as he instructed.

For a long time, Ruby did not answer. She watched the cabbage white butterflies dance in the blooming honeysuckle vines. A fox scuttled back and forth in the undergrowth against the back red brick wall. Sunbeams danced over lilacs and lily pads, reminding her that once upon a time, the garden had been a little piece of heaven she could call her own.

“How could I condemn myself to that?” Her words were humble, and haunted.

Duffy sprinkled black peppercorns into the water with a forefinger and thumb, and then topped off the start of the stew with three bay leaves. He stepped away from the pan, turned, and rested both hands on his cane. He tightened his shin to force the pain to steel his nerves.

“It will happen anyway Ruby. We were never to be. We were never meant to live.” He ran the tip of his tongue over his snakebites, the twang of steel grounding. “If taking on the mantle of Tantalus, a god destroyed by a selfish, abhorrent man, will gift life to this island… I would die a thousand times.”

“What about us?” Fire flickered in her eyes as she waltz around, shot him daggers, and balled her fists. “This is not about you, selfish bastard!” The fire grew to an inferno, swirling with incandescence.

Duffy rocked on the balls of his heels, uncertain wherever or not to flee or embrace her. He settled on caution.

“What do you mean?”

“We need you, Duffy Brandybuck. For centuries, through thick and thin, we have relied on one another and lifted one another higher.” Unflinching, she came so close to Duffy her nose touched his forehead. He buckled at the knee slightly beneath the weight of her sincerity. “You leave us behind; we’ll never forget your cowardice.”

[Duffy]

“Cowardice?” he spat. He pushed her away with what little strength he had left after a hard day. She moved out of his path out of kindness, not through faltering. “What the hell do you mean?” He flared his nostrils. “I am far from a coward!”

“Any man who runs away from his problems, instead of facing them head on, is a coward.” Her reply undid Duffy’s resolve, and he wavered.

“I…,” he wheezed. He felt dizzy. “I can’t breathe.”

“Don’t start with the theatrics.”

Duffy was not starting anything, save for a sudden wave of panic through the noble district. He felt his wound seethe and swell, and then burst with tendrils of magic as old as the island of Scara Brae itself. The first darted through the table leg, wrapped around the chairs, and bolted through the kitchen door. A second lashed at Ruby before penetrating the metal heart of the Aga.

“What is happening?” she roared. There was fear in her voice, unbridled by her usually stoic demeanour. She stepped out of harm’s way, as another tendril broke out of Duffy’s trousers, shadowy and abyssal, deathly and poisonous. “Duffy!”

The bard snapped back his neck, breathed a long bolt of light, and slammed backwards into the wall. The crash was tumultuous, and pots and pans rained down from the pot rack over the Aga in waves. Ruby screamed loudly. She produced a sword from thin-air, a single edged blade forged in mithril and unicorn hair. It sung a merry middle c, but fell short of a dramatic entry in the wake of the chaos all around it.

“I am not Duffy,” a spectral voice cackled. It came from Duffy’s body, but not his lips. “I am especially not a coward.”

Ruby’s eyes widened when she realised where she had the voice before. It was long ago, before they finally gained peace from their ancient enemy. She gripped Lucrezia so tight her knuckles whitened, and charged angrily and fustily over the utensil minefield. Before Oblivion could rise, she drove the blade down in a poised, accurate, and fatal thrust.

“Give,” she snapped. “Him.” She twisted the sword and it gathered muscles from Duffy’s shoulder into an agonising knot. “Back!”

Not one to bow low so easily, the Forgotten One Oblivion took the blade into his vice like grip. He looked at Ruby with glistening eyes, their spark inhuman, and their power unearthly. He pushed the sword out of his body, and knocked it aside. Before Ruby could defend herself, he launched upwards, free of his wound. He took her by the throat.

“He was never yours to begin with my dear,” he snarled. His tongue, salivating and bestial, came perilously close to Ruby’s cheek. At the last, he pulled away, tossed her across the kitchen like a ragdoll, and took up his cane. “He is certainly not going to usurp my domination with his petty sacrifice. To think me defeated so easily…”

Ruby fell unconscious to Oblivion’s laughter.

[Duffy]

Oblivion stepped out into the street, a grin on his face as timeless as it was evil. Beneath Duffy’s placid expression, a demon fought to break free of its chains. The bard’s corpse walked without his cane. His injury was present, but overcome by eldritch power. The sun shone everywhere but on the creature’s form, scared out of natural order by the swell of the Tap in its limbs.

“I will live forever.” His vitriol oozed contempt, and a light grew in his marl eyes. “I will not be forgotten.”

Embracing the rising power in his gullet, Oblivion arced back his head. He undid the last lock that kept him bound within Duffy’s presence. His flesh fell away, breaking apart like a mirror image until it faded to dust, mirage, and nothingness. Beneath the skin, there was a figure of light. The energy crackled, losing shape as it became free and unbound.

“I will avenge my siblings…,” he vowed.

He took the shape of Xem’Zund, the necromancer. For a glimpse in time, Scara Brae was deathless.

He took the shape of Poe, the crimson witch. For a slither of eternity, Scara Brae grew wild.

He took the shape of Denebriel, and with her beauty, the island knew faith.

He took the shape of Aesphestos, and for an age, a cruel genius guided Valeena’s mind.

“Oblivion!” A voice called from within the Winchester household. It was faint, but grew louder as its speaker tried harder and harder.

Finally, he began to take his own form. Two eyes hovered where eyes should be. They were bloodshot and marl. As he turned, metallic rings burst out from where his spine should be. They bolted around him, locked into an intricate cage, and glowed. Then skin formed, and vessel for the ascended form. Wings shot out, but folded down and around his legs. They lashed together into black legs to carry their master far.

“You are too late, Delilah Burton,” he hammered. His voice took on every form imaginable, gibbering and jabbering into Ruby’s ears and soul. She burst out onto the front porch as Oblivion’s claws manifested. “There is nought to be done to save this waif. It is over.”

“It is never over,” she seethed. With newfound strength, she leapt the steps and crashed onto the cobbles. In inappropriate heels, she charged.

As Lucrezia cleaved down in an arc, Oblivion called bracers of obsidian into being and blocked her strike with ease. The eyes remained emotionless, but stared into hers all the same. He pushed her away, but she did not relent. Repeatedly, she struck where she could, and dodged his half-hearted swipes. Each of his attacks could have snapped her spine, and each of hers burnt with the heat of the sun. Her sword danced with fire when it struck bone or flame, leaving her strength swiftly spent.

“You cannot win.” His voice was deadpan, devoid of an echo, and heavy with godly conviction. It drained Ruby of all resistance. “Ever.”