Growing concern and then overwhelming grief overtook her momentary jubilation as her tearful eyes sighted the horrible devastation before her. It was a scene that she had tried to prevent from coming to pass for many years, a nightmarish image that has haunted her dreams for a long while. Small fires burned and human weapons lay scattered and broken among stone debris that she knew was not from the castle's stone walls.
She cried her grief into the empty night.
Surrounded by nothing but the small hungry fires, the broken discarded weapons, and worst of all the desecrated remains of her kin, she wept from a wave of uncontrollable and overwhelming grief that surged through to her very soul.
It was never supposed to be this way. The captain had broken his word and allowed those barbaric Vikings to shatter her clan. She knew now that she should never have trusted him. She had been a fool to even consider thinking of him as a friend and ally and it had cost her everything.
A large shadow past over her as she shed her tears. Looking up she glimpsed through her tear filled eyes to see her love returning.
"Goliath," she breathed heavily.
Her heart momentarily fluttered, overjoyed that her love was alive and well. She would have run to him, to embrace him and rub brow ridges with him had sudden fear and guilt not replaced her joy as she saw him morn the remains of a clan member and then roar in righteous anger and grief to the empty night.
No, she could not yet face the clan leader about her part in this disaster, her terrible mistake in trusting the captain. She needed a little time to clear her head and bring her grief under control. She would return later, tell him that she was seeking him from worry. She was also just glad knowing that he was still alive and that he would be glad she was alive as well when she returned.
As Goliath's thunderous roar echoed like a dying memory through the night and in her heart, she fled into the forest.
Alone in the forest she wandered and wept for a long while until her tears ran dry, the trees of the forest a blanket of darkness nearly obscuring the sky of shining ethereal stars, the faint sounds of woodland creatures hidden within the darkness were at one with it which portrayed the forest's true wildness. Her ears had become deaf to the sounds of the forest, the darkness an embodiment of the numb emptiness that has replaced her grief. A small rabbit had been her only kill within the last hour for sustenance, the presence of meat a small comforting relief. For a long while she perched in a tree staring blankly into nothing, another meager shadow among the darkness, quiet and unmoving, that simply watched the moon shift lower in the sky like the struggles within her own soul.
Eagerness and apprehension grew within her as she approached the now silent stone castle. It was a strange and ominous sight, for she could not remember a night when the skies surrounding the castle and its land were devoid of the glorious sight of gargoyles gliding on the winds.
There were only heavy wisps of smoke, and silence engulfed the castle. The silence was all consuming and disturbing as another strange scene caught her eyes. Upon the highest tower were six still statues which were oddly familiar, she inspected them closely with confusion, their state unnatural and clearly the work of sorcery. Upon closer observation she quickly realized it was survivors of her clan, the young trio and the beast that had been sent to the rookery the previous night, the elder that had accompanied Goliath, and high above them now still and silent in a sad and contemplative pose was,
"Oh, my Love," she sobbed, deep sorrow and guilt once again grew quickly within her. Tears flowed anew at this horrifying realization.
"What have I…"
Anger burned cold in her heart as a sudden wave from the cold merciless sea below. No, this was not her doing, she was sure she knew with whom the blame truly lay with.
"What have they done to you?" she cried in a broken voice in her despair. Yes, it was they who had allowed her clan to be destroyed, it was they who had placed her love and the others into an enchanted sleep.
The faint whinny of a horse caught her attention. Down below she saw several familiar humans removing the eggs from the rookery to place them into wagons filled with straw.
How dare they commit further acts of desecration upon the remains of her clan!
She was about to stop them when she froze from a cold rising within her stomach.
The precious eggs. How could she ever face them when they began to ask about the rest of their parents and elders?
She simply went numb with confused guilt as she watched the princess, the Magus and the peasants ride away with the last remnants of her clan. A small part of her actually hoped that they would treat them well, or take them to where they will be properly raised by a proud gargoyle clan.
She watched them leave until they disappeared into the dark horizon, knowing there was only one option left to her. She climbed up to her frozen love, his skin cold and hard as the stone walls instead of warm flesh and filled with life as he should be in the night. The expression he had on his face was the only sign that he was once truly alive, though it matched the dark graying despair within her. She cupped his cold cheek and kissed her fingers from her lips to his frozen lips, one last tear watering her dark eye. She then lovingly kissed his forehead one last time to say good-bye, the tear falling down her cheek.
Despairingly she flew away into the lonely empty night, resigning herself to her fate of exile, never noticing her tear fall from Goliath's closed eye and down his frozen stone cheek as though it were his own.
****997
A ceremony was held for those who fell in the resent battle at Rathveramoen, but her thoughts were not with the others in the ceremony but elsewhere. She stared off into the direction over the green highlands and mighty forests where Castle Wyvern now stood empty and alone. It was where she wanted to be, but these rogues and nomads needed her more. As their leader she knew this to be true.
Her clan had simply got caught in the middle of another petty battle between the humans over who was to be the rightful leader of their kind, and she allied her new clan against the supporters of 'King' Constantine III with extreme reluctance. Several gargoyles had fallen in the battle, including her new second's mate, who had taken the blow from a human's blade meant for him. She understood well how he felt now, and yet she now knew that there may be hope for the last members of the Wyvern Clan in their stone sleep.
During the battle she had heard rumors from her then human allies that not so long ago Constantine had been hunting for two females who were rumored to possess a powerful magic book that may have been the Grimorum Arcanorum. Constantine and his sorcerers had come close to gaining the book, but it was also rumored that the females had been aided by a rogue red gargoyle. Before the Grimorum could be taken, they had all disappeared within a fiery sphere of light.
Had she known of this sooner, she would have used the Grimorum in some way to bring her love and the clan out of their stone sleep and taken this other rogue gargoyle into her new clan.
Yet hope had been rekindled for her, for if a spell can be cast then it can be removed and countered. She knew this well from her own studies in magic.
From now on she would have to carefully divide her time between leading her ever growing ragtag clan away from traitorous human affairs and finding a way of reversing the sleep spell upon her love and his clan.