Gargoyles: the Resurrection

Prologue: Into the Abyss

Castle Wyvern, Scotland
994 AD

The warning drum for those still in the air sounded above the battlements. An hour til dawn. She looked instinctively to the castle far below her while her wings pumped to keep her aloft. While her attention was diverted elsewhere, the white-haired male she'd been playing air tag with swooped in and tagged her on the back of the head with a gentle blow from his tail. Startled, she spun talons over top, losing a hundred feet of altitude before her wings snapped open and caught her.

She turned a glare flickering with white fire upwards at him, a smirk playing about on her lips.

"You're lucky dawn's coming, ruadh!" she called to him, finding a thermal and quickly climbing back up to her previous height. The red male returned her smirk, impossibly wide along his beak, and rolled lazily in the air.

"Ha! You couldn't catch a first-flight hatchling, greenskin," he taunted, mantling his wings to catch the thermal and allow him to hover. She grinned.

"We'll see. A race tonight, then. If the Vikings don't return, like Goliath's mate says they will." Her eyes flicked towards the castle battlements, where the Clan Leader and his scarlet-haired mate were deep in a heated discussion. Even as far as she was into the sky, her eyes were sharp enough to pick out the huge gargoyle and the second-in-command. Her attention was diverted to the side, as a pair of winged shadows passed under them to land in the castle courtyard, and she smiled. "Our rookery brothers seem to brewing trouble."

He grinned and flared his wings. "Still got some time to play left. Think I'll go join them in whatever mischief they're up to."

She laughed and shook her head, and her long brown ponytail whipped in the wind. "You'll end up in the rookery one of these days, ruadh," she said with a grin. "You and our brothers, all three of you."

He grinned like a cat and winked. "Gotta get caught first. I'll see you tonight for that race." Flaring his wings, he wheeled and dove towards the courtyard.

She turned and flew towards her typical roosting spot. A small group of her rookery sisters were already there, standing on the battlements and talking amongst themselves with much giggling. She dropped to the battlements, talons scraping gently across the stone as first one foot, then the other touched down. She caped her wings around her, the small handlike talons on each acting as a clasp to keep them together. "Evening, sisters. How goes the night?"

Luckily, it was her two favorite sisters. The small, smoky-skinned and black-haired female was sometimes called Ghost by the humans due to her skill with stealth as well as her coloring. She was standing with her arms folded, her webbed wings draped over her hips and legs, grinning at the other sister. A tall, ivory-skinned beauty, the other sister had a thin tiara of quills sweeping her hair back from her head, delicate wings that were stronger than they looked, and a thick tail with a spade-shaped wedge on the end of it. She could have the males falling all over themselves with the merest flick of her wing struts, and she often did just that, because she could. Ivory was grinning as well as they both turned to her.

"We were just talking about the upcoming mating season," Ivory said. "Our generation is old enough to choose mates and breed the next generation."

She smiled, and let her eyes go back to where the three were teasing the humans in the courtyard. "I know," she replied, and the smile faded into a soft, idiotic kind of thing that Ivory was more prone to do. Abruptly, she blinked, and turned her gaze back to her sisters, only to see the two of them staring at her with smug smirks.

"Chosen a token to exchange with him yet?" Ghost asked, one eye ridge arched in amusement.

"I haven't asked him yet," she replied, and she could feel the blood rushing into her cheeks, darkening her light-green skin to a deep emerald. She cleared her throat and made a show of rearranging her wings about her, dusting invisible specks from her leather halter in the hopes of distracting them. The other two, of course, didn't buy it.

"Uh huh.." There was a slight pause and Ivory continued. "Ghost's got her eye on that olive rookery brother your ruadh is always messing about with. Though, honestly, why you two would want hatchlings as mates is beyond me." Ghost made a protesting sound, ready to defend her choice from Ivory, but the white-skinned gargoyle just pointed towards the courtyard. "Look for yourself, and then try to deny it."

Intrigued, she turned around, noting that Ghost was doing the same. The aqua-green chubby one, the olive one, and ruadh himself were slinking ashamedly towards the rookery, the imposing hulk of the Clan Leader standing solidly behind them with his arms folded, watching them go. She sighed, but couldn't help grinning in bemusement. "I told him he'd end up in the rookery one of these days." She turned back to Ghost and Ivory with a long-suffering look that her smile completely ruined.

"Well... there's always the next season if they're not out in time." Ivory grinned. "And if they are… well, at least you know he's familiar with the rookery, so he'll be able to find it when you're gravid with egg."

Their laughter took them into the sunrise and stone sleep.

oOoOoOo

She was jarred awake suddenly, so suddenly it was disorienting. Sunset was close, she could feel it's approach tingle along the back of her spine. She tried to stretch her wings and limbs, but found she couldn't. She was still locked in stone, alert and aware but unable to move. Panic rose up in her before she squashed it back down. Never had she heard of this happening before. She'd woken before sunset on occasion, but it was the languid half-awake state that came as her stone skin was showing the first fractures, a lazy dreaming state that many gargoyles enjoyed as the sun was finally disappearing beneath the horizon. But never this. Fully awake, before dark, unable to move regardless of how hard she struggled.

She could hear something crunching distantly in the background, outside her stone skin. It distracted her from trying to puzzle out why she was awake but still frozen in her pose. She concentrated as hard as she could, straining her ears as hard as she could. It took her a long few moments to place the sound, and when she did, she went cold, straight to her soul.

Someone was crushing rock.

It had taken her a few minutes to detect the sound, but now it was all she could hear. It came at her from every conceivable angle, the angry, final smashing sound of heavy maces through stone. It filled her head until she was screaming in horror inside. Instinctively she knew that there was only one possible thing anyone would want to break -- the slumbering clan. Her panic swelled again until it mirrored the sound of rock breaking, falling, being smashed, and she couldn't control it. Deep within her frozen sleep-state, she fought like an animal to be free, before the same happened to her.

The first cracks were going through her stone shell, and the part of her that hadn't gone feral with terror and rage rejoiced with a cold sort of savagry. Soon she'd be free to avenge those of her clan who had been treacherously destroyed in their sleep. And then a mace fell, crushing her still-stone shoulder into rubble. She had time to scream once at the white-hot spikes of agony that were shooting through her, before the mace fell again, taking her head from her shoulders and dispatching her soul to the Abyss that was the end of all life.