The Valley of Kross

There weren’t always dragons in The Valley. Neither dwelt the ghasts, trolls, fae, or dozens of other fresh denizens that now made it their home.

The Valley was where Kross went as a child. He first found it in his explorations when he was six years old. It was a place safe from humans, where he could go to be alone, at peace. He could visit any time he needed, day or night. By day The Valley was verdant, lush, and washed in soft gold sunlight. The middle of The Valley was divided by a smooth crystal blue river with fields of ferns, flowers and tall grasses on either side. By night it was an ethereal dreamscape suspended in an infinite sky where the stars and Moon, reflected perfectly in the river; a crack in the ground revealing only more sky beneath his feet. The delicate chirps and croaks of the night creatures, the supple, grass-tainted breeze rustling the flora, all came together in that both vast and finite paradise. All of this doubly encircled by the forest grown round the outside of the fields and pushed up toward the snow-dusted peaks of the Cradle Mountains that rose up like guardians all around The Valley.

He would spend hours there, sometimes days. It was the one place he couldn’t be found or bothered. It was where he could be alone with his thoughts and away from The Noise. Away from the pain. He visited so often that the others worried about him. He didn’t have real parents. He had cranky keepers that saw him as income rather than a son.They said they ‘worried’ about him when he wasn’t there, but there was little they could do to stop him, and even less they could do to make him want to stay away from his sanctuary. .

Then, one day, it struck.

Kross went to The Valley. He had to. He saw ‘father’ do something terrible, so he fled. He did not know if he’d been detected, but at least he could not be followed. It was his 13th birthday. He liked The Valley at dusk. It was that feeling of the infinite sky with an extra layer of light protecting The Valley from behind the mountains. Kross laid down in the redolent grass and looked up into the sky. He pushed the terrible vision, The Noise from his mind as he’d learned to do, and focused on one star. The night sky, the soft sounds, the serenity filled him. The star took up his entire consciousness.

Slowly the star became brighter. After a minute, it seemed to be getting larger. Suddenly it was charging towards him. Kross stood up as the tips of the Cradle Mountains appeared to catch fire. Starlight thundered into The Valley as waves of force crashed into the mountains, trees, and grass. Then, like a solid pillar of living light, a javelin of lightning and power, it plunged into the center of the river sending ripples of light, fire, and shattering quakes that threatened to tear The Valley apart.

Kross came to, smelling ozone. He realized he’d been thrown several meters from where he stood. Slowly he performed a full-body inventory. No injuries. He rose to his feet and pushed against the great trepidation weighing down his legs. After a few steps, he cleared the tall grass away from the bank and saw the aftermath; rising up from the middle of the river was a large mound towering above the smoke and steam that roiled around it over a meter above the water.

The silence could have been a loss of hearing, but Kross knew that it was just The Valley holding its breath in desperate anticipation.

The mound was easily fifty meters wide. It was high enough that from where he stood, the top of it had only sky behind it. It was still twilight, enough to make out a shape rising out of the mound. It seemed small at first, until he realized it was only a hand. The head that followed, though a hundred meters away, was enormous. For a moment Kross thought a gorilla was emerging from the top of the mound, but it was the wrong shape, and too big. The shoulders were like a pair of hills stuck too close together with a boulder squeezed between them. That ‘boulder’ had a pair of burning eyes just under cavernous brow ridges. Below the eyes was a squat obelisk that served as a nose, then a mouth riddled with fangs and tusks.

It clambered down the side of the mound with an awkward grace. The mist that had formed made it only to the creature’s knees. It turned its massive shoulders and with a sharp swivel of its head, it found Kross. It began lumbering toward him. Kross stood frozen as the burning eyes burrowed into his mind. The gaze seemed to be pinning him helplessly where he stood. Paralyzed, terror ripping like black ice through his body, Kross could only watch as the mound, the mountains, and the very sky disappeared behind the behemoth that approached him.

It brought its face as close to his as it could. Kross, staring into the deep, molten rage of the creature’s eyes, could feel the raw power of the mountains themselves, a will as unstoppable as the rising sun, and a fury so old that only dead stars could know it.

In a voice that was the very sound of winds and rockfalls reverberating through great caverns, it said, “I will not harm you.” Kross could only stare, looking into those vengeful eyes, for what seemed several minutes… but he felt perfectly calm. The creature rose and turned toward the forest. Kross fled home.

Upon his arrival, he found chaos. Sheriff's deputies were in the house. One of them walked into his room and started asking questions. She was brisk and trying to be kind. She was talking to him like he was a frightened puppy.

“Are you okay?”

“Um… yeah, what’s going on? What are you doing here?” he asked the dark-skinned, serious woman.

The deputy took a beat while a quizzical look crossed her face.

“We’re here because of what happened, you know… to your father.”

It was Kross’ turn to don a perplexed look.

“I don’t know what you mean. What happened?”

“He… wasn’t here," the voice from the hallway was soft and unsure. It was his ‘sister’, Sera. They just called her ‘sister’ to pretend to be a family, but she was like him; no parents. No ‘real’ parents.

The deputy looked at her, then back at Kross, “You weren’t here when it happened?”

“I… no, I wasn’t, but I mean, I don’t know. What is going on?”

“Father’s dead.” Sera quavered.

There was a minute while the deputy let Kross comprehend the news. “Your father…”

“He’s not my father…” A reflexive response Kross often muttered under his breath.

“He was killed. Barely 30 minutes ago. A neighbor heard the noise, but it was over before we got here.”

“How?”

The deputy visibly fought to get the words out; “He was smashed.”

Another cumberous moment of silence followed. She continued; “He was thrown, against the fireplace stones and mantle, repeatedly. Someone very strong did this. Did you see anything? Did you see anyone leave as you were coming back?”

“No.”

The deputy took a moment. “Look, do you want to talk to someone? Is there…”

“Leave me alone, please. A lot just happened.”

Sera moved into the room and sat on the bed next to Kross. “Yes, please. I think we just need to be with each other and talk about this.”

The deputy hesitated, “Well, okay. But if you think of anything you must contact us.”

Kross and Sera looked up and nodded, their hands folded with each-others’. The deputy walked out. They didn’t say a word. Their eyes spoke. There was pain, uncertainty, gladness they were together, and deep in Sera’s mind, behind a very vague sense of relief, Kross could see a glimmer of fear.

The deputy arrived back at the scene. “Make sure none of the kids see this, especially the little ones…”, then muttered, “Or anyone else if we can help it.”

“Grayson.”

The deputy turned, “Yeah, Ferard, what’s up?”

“Look at this.”

She didn’t want to look at any of it. It was a man completely pulverized from the hips up. Ferard was pointing at the victim’s ankle. A couple pokes told her it was pulp, even though the foot, tibia and everything up to the hip was intact.

“What do you make of it?” Ferard asked, already knowing the answer.

“Fires of Hell…" Grayson uttered with mortal reverence, “The attacker held him by the ankle…”

“And swung him like a club into the stone fireplace…” Ferard continued.

“To beat him to death.”, Grayson finished with the last of her held breath, “By the gods.”

**********************************************************************

A week later, Sera was accepted to a special school for girls. The Headmistress heard her story on the news and found her grades acceptable. So she wrote a personal letter of invitation. Kross was happy for her. At least she was getting out after the summer. For Kross, life became more complicated. With ‘father’ gone and three other foster kids to take care of, ‘mother’ had taken a plunge... into a lake of wine. The rest of that summer saw him becoming the caretaker for the younger children full-time. It wasn’t until a month after his foster dad’s death that he was able to get back to The Valley.

Things were very different. It was the same place, the same mountains, forest, fields, and the same river, with the mound rising out of the middle of it. But he could barely take in what he was seeing.

Kross burned with bewildered excitement. Now, aside from the usual birds and bugs, there were new creatures in The Valley. There were definitely very different birds here now. A small group of them stirred up from the tall grass just meters away. The moment they hit the air and sunlight, it was as though they were lit with golden fire. So much so that they were almost brighter than the Sun. It was as though they weren’t truly physical, but made of mystic flames, yet burned nothing they touched. Kross turned his wonderment left and right. It was almost too much to take in. There were deer now, but not deer because each seemed to be made entirely of delicate living wood sinews flexing and writhing just like muscles. They had manes of flowers of every color in bright woven patterns and fur of moss. Their tails were a bouquet of willow-whips swishing with the breeze. The butterflies Kross thought he saw weren’t butterflies either, but faeries flying down to the surface of the water and skimming across it leaving trails expanding behind them. There were so many! Kross was entranced by their spectacular dance leaving ever-more complex and beautiful patterns and ripples across the surface of the sparkling water.

Everywhere he looked, there was something new. So much life and activity. It was almost enough to overload his wonder.

The mound was grassy now, so it looked more like a nice, symmetrically round hill. It also seemed a bit shorter. It could have been a trick of the daylight, but he was sure it was only half its previous height when the creature emerged from it that night. For a moment Kross flinched and scanned quickly about when he remembered the… troll that emerged from the mound. It was nowhere to be seen.

“The mound must have settled," he thought. It made sense to him, but from what he knew about meteors impacting the ground, there shouldn’t have been more than a crater.

Kross loved astronomy. He kept a telescope under his bed for any nice clear night and had a number of books on the subject. He used to point out the constellations to Sera when they were younger until she knew them all too. He liked the stars in The Valley because they were not only brilliant and countless against the black sky, but they were completely different from the stars at home. He spent many hours naming all the stars there when he was younger. During his night visits to The Valley, he would trace the brighter stars and name constellations. Then, with every visit he would track the progress of the constellations. It always surprised him a little when he found that what he thought was a star was in fact a planet. Or, in that one recent case, an actual meteor.

Kross stripped and entered the water. He’d been swimming in the cool, comfortable water of the river before. It was deeper in some places but most of it was walkable up to chin level. He swam toward the mound. The faeries playing on the water only took interest in him in that he was disrupting their game, but they shortly changed the apparently nebulous rules to include him in their pattern as he swam. He emerged at the base of the mound. It was a steep angle, but he was confident he could climb it. The soft new grass felt good against his skin. He had to resist the urge to giggle from the tickling sensation that came and went with the rhythm of his ascent. He wasn’t surprised at what he found when he reached the top: A crater. He was surprised, however, as he stood up on the lip that it wasn’t just a crater. It was a hole. It was easily 20 meters across. The inner walls were like obsidian; black glass from the impact, and they went straight down with no gradient.

And no bottom.

Nothing.

He could see maybe 50 meters down, but after that it was just a solid black hole. Kross rooted around for anything with heft. He found a loose piece of the vitrified dirt, laid down with his ear over the edge of the abyss, tuned out the rest of The Valley as best as he could, and dropped the chunk of sharp, hard earth into the depths.

There was no ‘thud’, no ‘bang’, no ‘splash’ for the longest time. Too long. It would have to be at least hundreds of meters deep or with too soft of a landing for any sound to report back. But just as Kross thought to give up, he heard something. It wasn’t anything like an impact. It was too faint to be sure but it was more drawn out, like a stutter.

Kross came down from the mound trying to replay the sound in his head. He cleared the river, put on his clothes, and played the sound over and over until…

“No…” Kross shook his head. It was far too faint to be sure and by now his memory was probably playing tricks with him, he told himself, but the only thing he could seem to identify the sound with was… laughing.

Kross decided it was time to go back. He could never be sure how long he was in The Valley. He had so much to do and the children were depending on him. He gave one last look back at the newly vibrant, life-filled sanctuary, and the mysterious Well in the center of it all, and set back for home.

***********************************************************************************************************

“Were you there?” Sera met him as he returned. It was nice to be met by a friendly face. Sera truly felt like a sister to him. He’d known her since she came to the family when he was 8 and she was 6. She was slight, like him. Her hair was so blonde it was nearly white. ‘Father’ called her a ‘toe-head’ or something. It never made sense to him. She had blue-grey eyes and she was small for 11 while he was a little tall for 13. She seemed to be a little lighter in the last month.

“Yes. It’s different.”

“The monster?”

“I never said it was a monster.”

“The way you described it sure sounded like it.”

“Monsters hurt people.”

Sera’s face went dark for half a moment.

“Okay, but it did sound scary.”

“Oh, it was. There was something, I dunno, ‘okay’ about it though. It was like it… understood me.”

“Like I do?”

“Oh, you think you do!” he chided. Sera giggled.

“When are you going to take me with you?”

“Maybe when you stop asking?”

Sera put on a pout with the full force of half-sincerity.

Kross sighed, “I really don’t know if I can. I promise we’ll try before you go.”

“Soon?”

“Yes, but first we have to make dinner for Tyler, Kira, and Matty.”

“We don’t have anything.”

“I’ll get mom’s card and go to the store.”

Sera looked concerned.

Kross shrugged, “It’s after the 1st, so it should be fine.”

“Yes, but it’s getting dark.”

Kross looked around. Sure enough the windows were dimming. “DAMN”, he admonished himself. He really was gone longer than he should have been. The vision of the Well swelled up in his mind.

“It’s okay, I’ll be quick. You just watch the kid, K?”

Sera nodded with no attempt to hide the worry on her face.

Kross found mother’s purse on the floor next to the couch she was chronically passed out on.

“There it is.” He muttered as he pulled the debit card out. ‘Mother’ stirred. Kross froze. It’s not like she could or even would stop him, but getting her involved in anything meant too much anger, crying, yelling, and apologizing to deal with. He wanted to get this over with.

He set out down the street. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, or a nice one. It was in that rough-edged zone between the actual city and the nearest real suburb. He took a quick pace and turned right down the street where a Buck-A-Store was nestled between a bowling alley and a scrapyard with a warehouse.

After about a 15 minute walk, he was at the store. There was a guy arguing with one of the managers about paying for some beer as he walked in. He had a blue windbreaker which was about right for the early summer. The manager was just in that gaudy green uniform all the employees had to wear.

Kross took a cart, which was small-ish compared to the ones at the big grocery stores, and put enough mac-n-cheese, hotdogs, milk, and cereal in it to last a couple days. The argument at the front of the store went up a notch as Kross made it to the check-out.

The cashier knew. Most of the employees at the store knew. They’d all heard the horrific story of what happened to his dad. This cashier was Leena. She knew Kross and his situation at home because she’d done delivery there for the first couple weeks after the murder. She ran the card, put the groceries in bags with hand-holes because she knew he was walking, gave him a receipt, and gave him a friendly, “Hope things are okay. We’ll see you again.” over the noise of the argument.

Kross smiled. “Thanks Leena.”

As he looked up toward the altercation, he met eyes with blue windbreaker man. He looked rough, like he hadn’t showered in a week. He was watching Kross.

There were some homeless in the area, but there were also plenty of people who had homes… and problems. As Kross walked out, the argument reached a crescendo and the manager exclaimed she was calling the police.

Kross was barely 10 meters away when the man came outside.

“Hey, kid…”

Kross turned trepidatiously.

“Hey, ya gotta help me out. I have no food and nothing to feed my two cats. You like cats, right?” His voice seemed just too needy. He took a step forward. Kross took a step back.

“Just lemme borrow your card. You can go with me.”

Kross shook his head and took another step back.

“Look I’m just gonna borrow it, I’ll give it back!” He took a slow but large step toward Kross.

“No. I have to get home right now.” Kross tried to sound grown up and authoritative, but he was already feeling panic.

That’s when Windbreaker Man lunged. Kross was on his toes and took off fast. He didn’t look back, but he could hear Windbreaker Man beating the ground every step right behind him. He couldn’t turn because he knew the guy could cut the angle. In front of Kross was the gate to the scrapyard. It was open just barely enough that he could squeeze through sideways, but he lost one of his bags of groceries. After a dozen paces inside the yard, Kross looked back to see Windbreaker Man first try to squeeze through the gate, then start climbing. Kross knew the barbed wired would only slow him down so much. He ran into the warehouse.

It was really dark now. Kross went around the inside looking for another door. There wasn’t one. Windbreaker Man’s silhouette appeared in the only doorway.

“Look, kid, I’m not gonna hurt ya. Just gimme the card, that’s all I want.”

He’d seen Windbreaker Man before. He was around the neighborhood quite a bit and even though he didn’t always cause trouble, he had a reputation for hurting people. Kross thought, “He’ll know I know he took the card. He might want to…” Kross imagined being strangled to death just to keep him silent. He really didn’t know what the guy would do, but the man was angry and irrational. Kross thought, “I’m gonna die” with more finality than anyone his age should have.

He made up his mind; to go to the one place no one could find him. He was used to running there when he was scared, and this certainly was one of those times.

“Hey! Kid! Come out!”

The words trailed off as Kross fled for The Valley.

It was dusk. Moonflowers were blooming over the top of the high grass. Kross sat on the edge of the river and sobbed. What was he going to do?!? He didn’t want to go back, but he had to get dinner for the kids, and Sera, and there were so many things. His sobs turned into a vibration through his whole body. It was like waves of boiling water sploshing back and forth. Slowly he started to realize that it was more. He took a deep breath and stopped sobbing. The vibrations continued. The vibrations turned into rumbling.

Kross stood up. The air smelled funny, like after you strike a match and that first stinging scent hits your nasal passages. The vibration traveled through him from the Well. Something was coming, again.

First there was smoke. The mound of the Well was like a smoldering volcano. He could see light, a red light, but dark, lighting the smoke up from underneath. The light began to fill the smoke and turn it into a blood red cloud menacing above the Well and spreading outward in all directions. It was devouring the sky, the stars, all the other light of The Valley. Then, the shape emerged. It was a silhouette of a spike, at first. Then another spike. The fear from Windbreaker Man turned into a speck on the face of the Sun. The form rising from the Well uncurled a long snout and chin from a serpentine neck. A giant set of talons pierced the edge of the mound, then another. Then, magnificent black shadows rose into the smoke, spread out, rose up as a conductor prepping his orchestra, and with a vast, savage, but apparent slow motion due to their size, the wings beat down through the blood-red smoke sending it to scatter and blend with the water and the stars.

Kross felt a little voice in his head telling him, “You should be used to this now." He desperately wanted to laugh, to panic, to run, to scream to flee to anywhere like a man coming face-to-face all too suddenly with a creature on snap from ending his life, but he was frozen in that same, cold terror that gripped him before.

Slowly, the muzzle of The Dragon came to bear on Kross. It might have been a kilometer away, it might have been inches. Kross had no sense of scale in the presence of this vast creature. Then, with those flaming, blood-red eyes searing into him, Kross heard: “I will do you no harm.”

With that, The Dragon brought its wings up, and then in a Valley-sweeping beat, brought them forcefully down and took off into the night sky.

Kross had no idea how much time had passed after The Dragon left. He was still working through everything he’d felt. “Sera!” He realized, and he took off for home.

Sera was waiting anxiously when he returned. “Are you okay?!?”

It took another moment to compose himself. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I only brought the one bag. I’m sorry, there were supposed to be two.

“I know, but you saved the hot dogs and milk.” She paused, “There was a fire… at the warehouse.”

“What? When?”

“While you were at the store. Ms. Lenna from next door came to check on us. They think someone was inside.”

A sick feeling welled up in Kross and a wave of dizziness threatened to drop him. He steadied himself.

“I’m fine, it’s alright.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay. If someth-..," Sera covered her mouth and teared up. She threw herself into him and held him with all her strength. As Kross held her, he fought to make sense of what just happened.

“What did happen?" he thought. The last place he was before The Valley was the warehouse. It had to be a coincidence, obviously.

He cooked the hot dogs so they could eat something and made sure the kids drank a nice glass of milk before bed. Sera stayed with him. She didn’t want to sleep alone, she said, but he knew she was afraid to let him go. They fell asleep where not even dreams could find them.

**********************************************************************

It had been a week since the fire. The news reported that a local man started the fire that killed him in the warehouse after an argument at the Buck-a-Store. The first few times Kross saw Windbreaker Man’s picture up on the news, he stared in quiet shock. His name was Ray Fields, a local guy, known to get into trouble, and became an arsonist in his last act on Earth.

Kross hadn’t gone back to The Valley in that week, but he had a terrible feeling that something needed to be worked out; to be understood.

So back he went.

It was a Moonless midnight. As he forged through the tall grass to the river, he heard new, strange noises. He shook it off. The Valley was changing, he thought, whatever else could happen he’d be ready f…. The thought was cut off by the sight of a face directly in front of his. His eyes went wide. He was looking at a ghost? A specter? The fear welled up, but he pushed it back down. It was like a skull made of mist, but with wisps of smoke that gave it a face-like appearance. It suddenly opened its mouth and gave a wild screech that sent ice through his veins and then vanished. He was pretty sure he peed himself a little.

“That’s a first," he joked at himself.

In the clearing before the river, he had a full view of everything not hidden in the grass. Thousands of fireflies filled the air just above the water and clearing. It was as if stars had poured out of the sky and into The Valley. Among them, he saw dozens of creatures like the ‘new friend’ he just made. Kross began to enjoy having a sense of humor about all the new developments.

There was a distinct humming all around him. He looked to the mound where the Well was. There seemed to be a kind of, ‘halo’ just around and above the top of the mound. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out a very faint pillar of light, the exact diameter of the Well, shooting straight up into the starry sky. It was soft, the hum, the light, like the beginning of a long, epic musical piece. But something was wrong. It didn’t feel right at all. It wasn’t like the terror of the last two times, it was like… an illness just before the symptoms came. Somehow he knew that, unlike the Troll and the Dragon, this wasn’t happening now. He didn’t know how he knew. It was like a memory that didn’t belong to him, but he was sure of it. Then, in the faintest regions of his mind, he heard a sound he’d heard before; a laugh, the laugh he heard from the bottom of the Well. This time he could make it out. It wasn't jovial or even derisive… it was cruel. That’s when a terrible certainty poured into him like concrete:

Something else was coming, something terrible this time, something worse. And Kross knew: It was going to bring magic to the world. Dark Magic.