Chapter 1- Copper Cutter
They had told her and told her and told her a third time just for good measure to wait until they cleared the pass. Patty had thought the freak earthquake from a few days ago would have seen business for her Stornway inn skyrocket as stranded and wounded travellers flooded in for 'a bed and a bite' and took refuge from any more calamities. Patty had once fancied herself quite a shrewd woman with an eye for business and the ability to know anybody at a glance. She was not quite sure how she fancied herself in her current predicament.
She did not have time for this. Every second she spent trapped there was another second her inn, Edwinn's inn which he had built from the ground up with his own two blessed hands, went without busness and was pushed ever closer to bankruptcy and closure. She could never have let that happen. That inn was everything to her. It was where she had made herself when she was nothing more than a lost girl without direction or dream. It had become her charge when Edwinn had left for his daughter's health and now it was her responsibility to drag Edwinn back if need be to save the Quester's Rest. But how she planned on doing so half buried in rubble in the bowels of the long abandoned (and for good reason) Hexagon she had no idea.
She would have cursed if she could have afforded noise. She dare not even as much as whisper though, not with that thing so close by. That thing that had found her and charged her and tore the ceiling down atop her when she fled. They had split the mountains in two some time ago rather than force people to take the monster infested trip through the Hexagon to travel from Stornway to Angel Falls and there had been little question why. Too many were dying for the trip for King Schott to sit idle. What had made Patty think she could beat the odds when she needed to most and make the trip alone?
She spat at her own weakness. She could not give up now, not when Angel Falls and Edwinn were so close. She could feel the stones clasping her lower half to the floor but could not turn to free herself. If only she could have turned to use her arms.
Something slipped and she gasped for the shock. Her palm slapped over her mouth and the crack rattled the dead chamber air. Wide eyes scanned where they could and her ears could hear footsteps. Loud footsteps. How close? She might have been able to twist round and free herself but the noise would surely bring the beast to her again. It was a choice between a slow death of endless fear and starvation and a potentially quick mauling. Hardly the most favourable gamble but it was the gamble she had to take. For her life, for her inn, for Edwinn's inn.
She took far too long in preparing herself and the footsteps' volume tore at her resolve. They were oddly smaller though. Odd. She was sure it was simply her mind toying with her, bored with her procrastination.
"Get it together girl. Just turn, push and run. Slice of pie." Her whispered words were bold but she was content to lay where she were and wait for something. She forced herself on, slowly at first. The stones were heavy and the dusty air had her fighting chokes in her quest for silence. She made a push, grunting. The rocks moved against one another, cracking in time with the sprinting footsteps. Something was coming. Too fast for caution. Too fast for fear. The grunt became panicked curses and the curses choked her. The hacking coughs brought her eyes to water and blinded her. All she saw was a hazy blur and in that blur, something stood over her.
"You are alive then, it would seem." A haughty voice with an accent Patty's worldly ears knew nothing of but could tell was lined elegantly with spite said. Patty blinked and rubbed sight back into her eyes. "Patty, is it?"
Her rescuer could not have been older than a teenager but had the face and distaining sneer of someone far older and far bitterer than any teenager had a right to be. Neatly parted brown hair coated at the fringe with perspiration and an upright stance and posture, someone of secular or noble upbringing, she supposed. Yet the grime slathered over his face and hands coupled with his visible indifference to the filth told her something else. A rebellious snob or a peasant with a complex? Patty inclined towards the former by the young man's attire. It was like nothing she had seen before outside of the occasional travelling minstrel to turn up at the Quester's Rest. Over a tight black shirt was an odd jacket of red and gold strips that extended not far past the shoulders but was joined by an ivory button at the throat. It was nothing cheap, clearly and neither was his weapon by any means.
Weaponry was not her forte by any means outside what she was told by the occasional warrior hoping to impress her but she knew the sword this young man held outclassed any she had seen before. Stained by use though it was, she felt in awe of the blade. It was something that belonged more in the tabernacle of a church than in actual combat and looking at the metal too long might have convinced her that it sung.
So, in two seconds, she had her rescuer down. He was from a privileged upbringing, perhaps the mayor's son from Angel Falls, yet more than competent in battle and well aware of the fact. Right handed, however using his left. The lack of injury suggested it might have been his trump card in times of crisis. While assumedly inspired by the Gleeban battle minstrels, she might have urged him down a different path. Not a warrior or a mage, something as disconnected and detached as he appeared to be.
"Yeah. That's me." She gestured with her hand, trying to feign comfort "So what brings you down to this fine hole in the dirt?" He's standing still right now. So those footsteps I hear can only be…
"A favour I owe." He quickly explained as he stepped closer and began to see to the rocks that trapped her. They moved easily under his strength. That and his eyes…he isn't normal.
"Peachy. I suppose I thank you, right?" She motioned to his sword. "That's not some copper cutter you got there. Make sure it don't slow you much. Don't want to be here when that thing gets back."
Suddenly he tensed, jostling Patty. She didn't think she had offended him, she hadn't seen him as the touchy type. Then she heard it too. Not just footsteps, she realised she had stopped hearing them altogether over the beating of her own heart in her chest.
She heard breathing.
Then her own…
…and then the roar of the hexagoon.
While running from it Patty had never appreciated how huge the beast was. Always she had only heard it or caught a glimpse of it but always smelt it. Behind the teeth in its monstrous jaws, each as large as her two fists placed side by side, nestled a stench as foul as the hexagoon itself. A horn from either side of its sickly green mane jutted forth in a sharpness that reminded Patty of her childhood fear of knives. Her rescuer had risen to his feet, seemingly abandoning her to save herself and focusing entirely upon the hexagoon. The two locked red eyes of Patty thought for a moment that she had vanished from existence so far as he was concerned.
"Hey! Kid! You!" Patty scrambled for some kind of name. "Copper Cutter, darn it! That's the big guy I was running from when I got stuck here. Hurry up and get me out! Don't just stand there admiringly!"
A cold draught rushed through the chamber and gently flicked Patty's hair and then brushed the loose tassels of Copper's jacket. He spoke to her in a voice as chilly as the breeze.
"Angel Falls will be safer with this thing dead. You, by extension, will be as well."
Patty gaped at the mouth. She knew confidence and could even respect it to an extent but she would never condone idiotic arrogance. Words deserted her when Copper's sword found itself strapped to his back in blissful useless standby.
"You…you're going to get us both killed." Patty heard her own voice as far too hollow for her liking. She shook herself to life. Copper may have intended to die there for his own blithering arrogance, hand to horn with the hexagoon, but Patty could not afford that luxury just yet. With renewed strength, she attacked the rocks trapping her. She growled against pain twisting round and did all she could to ignore the implosion of her ears when the hexagoon roared and charged.
She found herself just at the right angle at the right time to watch Copper snap his arms around the hexagoon's right horn. The beast forced him back nine steps but his olive boots dug into the stone and carved paths until they stopped.
Patty thought she had seen it end there but then Copper began to yell and twist and
By the Almighty is he...?
Copper cried out and launched the hexagoon over his shoulder and over her. The monster's shadow cast her into darkness but her eyes followed Copper the whole way.
First he raced past her, speeding past the flying hexagoon and into and up the wall. He landed on the hexagoon's haired stomach, stumbling and nearly falling. He gripped two bunches of hair and stabilized himself before leaping up, somersaulting and planting his feet on the ceiling. His red eyes took in the flying monster in all the time gravity allowed. It was apparently more than he needed.
Patty watched him press off and lurch forward with a quick glint all she got to tell her he had drawn the sword.
The beast shrieked when Copper ripped through, a rotating blade and nothing more in that moment. A crack shredded the air and the horn crashed to the ground, burying itself halfway in the stone. Copper touched down after followed by the muffled thump of the hexagoon's body.
In the subsequent unsettling quiet, Patty found it in her to rattle free from the rubble- the Almighty knew Copper was not going to help her any more than he saw he needed to.
"You're a real sweetie, aint ya? Comin' all this way for little ol' me?" Patty smiled through the pain she was shaking from her leg.
Copper did not seem to hear her, instead staring fixated at the body of the hexagoon. "I missed." He grumbled. Then he turned to Patty with a dark look. "It is not yet slain, only unconscious. That will have to do for now, seeing as you are free. Come, I have no desire to be in this wretched place any longer than needs be." He grabbed her at the wrist and began to pull at her. Patty felt it wise not to try and pull back.
"You sure are some real smooth talker." She commented. Copper pulled her most of the way to the main chamber of the Hexagon and she watched as the monsters all of Stornway had been instructed to fear fled from his path.
"You were a fool to tread this path. Do you not know that soldiers from your Stornway began work to clear the mountain path only yesterday? What journey was so imperative that you risk so much to make it?"
"That's my concern, Copper Cutter kid." Patty bit. Copper was quickly wearing on her but her innkeeping tricks slowly kicked back into blaze. A false smile and idle chit-chat ought to see her to Angel Falls without her trying to strangle her rescuer. "No offence meant. It's just my issue, y'see?"
"Well you almost died for it. Had that happened, she would have been distraught."
"She?"
"I said I owed a favour."
"What for?"
No response.
It would bug Patty no end, but she realised that perhaps a journey travelled in silence might be better for both of them.
When the faintest glimmers of natural light trickled brightly in thin strips around the final corner, Patty at once felt tired. Her legs which had carried her like weightless gusts quickly converted to pain shackled blocks of lead. Fresh air seeped into her lungs in a cool spot and she smiled.
"Can you keep walking?" Copper suddenly asked her. After the mute labyrinth trek, his voice took her more by surprise than if the hexagoon itself had taken her hand.
"Yeah. It's a push but I'm good. Why? You worried for me or something? Aint you just the sweetest."
"Do you recall I told you that the beast was not dead?"
Patty felt her stomach turn and the world pull out from under and around her. She tossed her head round, her neck protesting for fatigue. She could not see it; of course she would not. She would always have heard it first. So what would that mean, otherwise?
"What? You gonna go back down there and finish the job? Well, I'm touched you went through the trouble of sparing me the sight and all but don't you think it would have been better to do it there and then?"
For the first time, Copper actually looked as though he heard her. It was not much, only a flicker across his cheek, under his eye and a quick empty open of his mouth but Patty's eye saw embarrassment.
"That is not how I was taught to do it." He managed, denying her anything beyond that as he stepped away and stood guard with his back to her and his sword in hand.
"Honour and all. I getcha." Patty was honestly glad to be out of Copper's company. She had places to be and an old friend to drag home and neither of those aims afforded her the pleasure of Copper's git-hood. "Suppose I'll see you at Angel Falls, right? I just keep going west, right?"
She was used to Copper's quiet at this point and so was entirely unsurprised when she only received a nod from the back of his head.
She wanted to just walk off to Angel Falls and leave him there but the more she thought about it, the less sense it made. Since the earthquake, monsters swarmed the world with aggression the likes of which had never been seen in recorded history. She liked to think she could make her way alone; Angel Falls was hardly the wrong side of Dourbridge in terms of danger. Then what? She found Edwinn and his daughter and waited until the pass was cleared. The Almighty knew she didn't plan on chancing the Hexagon again. If nothing else, Patty might have enjoyed watching Copper drop kick some foolhardy slime on the way back. That aside, she needed a rest. So she wandered over to the wall by the entrance and took a seat, sighing loudly as she did so.
Copper wheeled on her, red eyes open and his face stretched in urgency. "MOVE YOU DOLTISH TAVERN WENCH!" he screamed and Patty shot to her feet, ready to uppercut him clean through the chin.
Then the ground in between them cracked and splintered and the hexagoon shot up and through. It stank the same as before but its eye as it rose up before Patty had never been so filled with rage.
"Dammit! I misjudged it. I misjudged everything and now the village is at risk!" Copper growled, hammering his forehead with the handle of his sword until the pasty pale skin flushed bright red.
Patty darted out as the tumbling stones from the hexagoon piercing the ceiling collapsed around her. She was not about to be trapped again so quickly; she could not stand the idea of Copper having to dig her out again.
"What you say?" she rushed in close to Copper and snatched him by the jaw. He was a short one, she could see now they were that close to one another. "Why would the Falls be at risk? And any more of your fancy posh stick and I'll wallop the red from your eyes, kid!"
Copper scowled, pulling away and looking up through the hole in the ceiling where the hexagoon had latched to the lip and was roaring a terrible cry as it pulled itself up and sent more stones crashing down.
"Monsters are no idiots, despite what your inherent mortal arrogance would have you believe. It understands we came from a settlement and understands that the west holds the softer target." He went quiet again, but in a different way. Patty had not stopped looking at his eyes, for how they intrigued her in their difference, and she could tell that he was looking at the hexagoon anew. It was not looking so much as it was analysing, studying. She watched the subtle jerks of the chin and the rapid flicker of his blinking and then the flash to normality when he was finished.
"You had me understand that you knew and could make the way to Angel Falls, is this correct?" he asked.
It was Patty's turn to nod and say nothing.
"Then I shall meet you again in friendlier circumstance, I hope." And with nothing else, he shunted Patty to the floor out of the path of a falling stone. He leapt atop it, then to another still falling and to another still until he reached to hole. By then, the hexagoon had screeched its celebration and began its charge to Angel Falls in one gigantic soaring leap with stones still flying out from its fur behind it.
Copper Cutter, that was the name he was given and one did not intend to be using long enough to complain at, realised it had been a relatively terrible method of pursuing the hexagoon without wings. While at this point he could consider himself a rare expert in the art of falling he did not suppose a fall from the height he had placed himself at was something to be coveted.
Every second, he was falling and scraping back mere metres for every hop between stones. The hexagoon shrank from sight and swelled up again over and over until Copper felt sick in the stomach. Finally, he struck out his hand and snatched up a handful of the spiny fur on the tip of the monster's tail. It slipped. His sword hand reached out and added fingertip strength to the grip.
His heart pounded in time with his head nd his vision limited itself to a single tunnel between himself and the enemy. The winds tearing past his forehead told him he was sweating but he had never been colder.
He yanked the fur and brought himself upright. Staring down the hexagoon's back he could see in the near distance the cascading and almost divine spread of the waterfall from which Angel Falls took its name. It had been that waterfall into which he had fallen and from its mythological benevolent pool he had been pulled out and cared for.
The beast would not defile that space so long as he drew breath.
His teacher had always ordered him to curb his reckless streak and it had remained the only lesson he had found impossible to heed. He sheathed his sword; he needed both hands for this. Breathing became near impossible for the winds and changing altitude and his eyes were forced to squint. Putting out one hand after the other, he clambered along the monster's back. The beast lurched sideways and Copper leapt a moment too later to make the critical strike.
"Damnation!" he cried out as he jumped from the neck and twisted round in the air to face the hexagoon in freefall. He was clumsy, twice now he had missed the vital spot and instead hacked away again and again through a horn. His teacher would be sneering in disgust if he could have seen him then.
The final horn was shredded by Copper's blade into twenty eight fragments, each of which hit the ground before Copper's heel smashed down into the hexagoon's scalp and forced the dazed monster into the ground.
Copper landed on the hexagoon's back with a dull thump and let gravity roll him down the beast's side and on the soft green grass that surrounded Angel Falls. He looked up at the sky; it was a clear day with a sun only semi-obscured by cloud. He would have preferred a storm, if he was honest, but Angel Falls was simply too peaceful for anything shy of a perfection that felt thoroughly dishonest to Copper.
He swore he could hear his name being called out in a voice he knew. Hers? Was it she who had pulled him from the waters and waited on him until he returned to health? If so, then she was a bigger fool than he already took her for. Clearly the beast was not yet dead and approaching it could hardly be described as the wisest course of action. A glimmer of light flashed in front of him, violet and bright and momentarily blinding. When his sight returned, he was greeted with the roaring open maw of the hexagoon.
"This is surely a jest…is it not!?" He groaned as the beast clamped its giant jaws around his waist, clamping tight in efforts to crush him. His arms burned trying to keep the mouth pried apart and his nose burned all the more from the stink. Before he fully knew what was going on, he was flying again only now without wings. He soared once more over Angel Falls and caught a glimpse of she who had helped him stepping from her home and jumping back in horror when she saw him. She was still wearing her ridiculous orange bandanna, did she ever take the thing off? Always nearby, of course, was Ivor, the son of the mayor. An utter ponce and lackwit but of course he had to be to be so smitten with her. They both looked up and gawked at him and then looked out into the lands around the falls and terror possessed them both.
Then Copper hit the church spire and blackness overtook him.
The earthquake had knocked the bell from the spire, which Copper supposed was a good thing. He needed a thousand things before a ringing bell in his ears. How long had he been unconscious? Not long, apparently. The hexagoon, now hornless and doubly filled with humiliated anger, was still charging for the village. The ground rattled under its stampede and Copper would not be difficult to convince that the tremors could knock celestrians from heaven.
One eye was useless for now, Copper did not have time to try and pry it open. Energy trickled back into his limbs and he groped around for his sword. He burst awake when he could not find it, the constant throb forgotten in the moment of panic. How could he have lost it? He could have sworn that he had never let it go, even during his flight. The renewed roar of the hexagoon brought his attention back to the village he had been told to protect. Every mortal was screeching and running around like spooked livestock before any respectable race. It was raw anarchy. Each saw to themselves and their own safety before even daring to think of the others and even then the thought was relegated to mere pity. He saw Ivor shunt the horseman to the floor, running against the tide of people fleeing to the back of the village. Ivor stood at the gates, sword in hand, set to face the hexagoon. He was shouting something, two things specifically. Copper could hear nothing but an endless ringing. He was shouting something to the beast, for certain, and something over his shoulder to…
Erinn.
The foolish little girl! Copper mentally snarled seeing the girl who had pulled him from the falls still standing there staring at him. Shock? Mere idiocy? Copper was almost tempted to leave them both to their fates.
Almost. He still had a duty to perform. Beyond that, eve, he noticed the sword Ivor was wielding.
Presumptuous little..!
Copper ran down the church, rolled into the ground and sprinted towards the gate.
I feel…warm.
He passed Ivor, wheeling to snatch the sword without losing momentum. People were still screaming. There was so much noise. Some of it, he thought, was his name being called out. He did not care. Even the hexagoon fell silent.
He could see everything he needed to see.
Minutes later, when the world returned to the monotony devoid of crisis, Copper watched the hexagoon explode in the familiar tame indigo cloud that marked the death of a monster. The village, he could hear, was quiet but he could feel every set of eyes resting on him.
Not long after, he felt a soft hand slap his shoulder and almost push him to the ground. He could finally feel how exhausted he was and he was still half blind.
"That was something, kid. That was really something." Patty said. So she had found herself able to return. She had struck Copper as the sort to be capable of at least that much.
"It was a catastrophe." Copper could not even muster the strength to grumble. "But now, it is done."
"If you say so, it'll be so. I'm not gonna argue with you…uh…what's your name?"
"Copper Cutter's fine, to you"
"Well then, Copper Cutter, I don't suppose you could be a real doll and give me one more bit of help? Now we're at the falls and all, I don't suppose you could give me a point in the way of good sir Edwinn?"
"Erinn?"
"No…"Memory flashed for Patty at the name. "Ah! But that's his daughter. Real sickly little thing, scared him half to death and halfway across the continent over here. Water's supposed to be special or something, works wonders and all that tripe if you could stomach it."
"I can take you to Erinn. I am…not from here but you can trust that few know it as well as I."
Patty pulled Copper to his feet and they both slogged their way through the wooden entrance into the village of Angel Falls. Copper, in the depth of his being, pitied Patty and Erinn both the same. The Almighty knew that he was not going to be the one to tell the Stornway visitor that Edwinn was dead.
