//------------------------------//
// The Lord of Midnight 
// Story: Ponies of the Abarat 
// by Aslfrasle 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 2: The Isle of Midnight


From the rubble, a green, wispy mist began to ooze out as the nearby wreckage shifted and shuddered, eventually being displaced as a pale, gaunt figure rose from the ruins like a ghost rising from the grave.

“That HAG!” rasped the figure, he coughed up smoke and dust as he struggled to stand. “I could have been crushed, or worse killed!” he shook the dust and grime from his robes as he stood up, shards of glass hanging from what remained of his liquid collar, the tubes that fed into it hanging limp, against the mottled grays, greens, and oranges of his nearly bald head. The eerie green nightmares, that travelled from his subconscious though the tubes, were now dripping out into the air, forming a wispy greenish smoke around his person, their former home inside his collar now lying among the shattered glass where he had risen from. He limped out of the wreckage and took in his surroundings, and he began to notice from the destroyed furniture and various other effects that had resided within that this was the rubble of the towers of the Iniquisit. 

“She must have destroyed all the towers save her own…” He paused to cough, still shaken from his near-death experience “as a show that she was now the sole ruler of Gorgossium, and I’m sure she’ll have murdered anyone still loyal to me as well, she would never leave such things to chance…”

“I must leave this place, if I linger she, or her wretched stitchlings will certainly find me, and that Must. Not. Happen…she has already committed matricide and patricide as well as infanticide, and if she were to find me she would probably feel no different about murdering me as she did to her parents and children, as well as to my siblings” he wheezed through pained breaths as he began to limp down the hill and into the forest of gallows. 

“Vesper’s Rock has always been hidden from her sight. Her stitchlings, being merely made of living mud and canvas, cannot venture into water, lest they collapse and fall to pieces. I should be able to hide out there while I formulate a plan as to how I will deal with…Granny Dearest” the last words dripping with venom.

As he began wandering through the forest he began muttering to himself.

“I swear that vile hag shall rue the day that she ever tried to take my birthright from me, for I am Christopher Carrion, Lord of Midnight, feared throughout all the islands! I shall not be denied my vengeance!” 





Vesper’s Rock…to most it would be naught but a small pile of gray and bronze colored rocks lain upon a beach of gray pebbles, but to Christopher, it had always served his purposes. The island’s negligible size made it invisible to the hag as all her efforts were spent monitoring and watching over Gorgossium to assure that she would know everything that happened there, and that required all her concentration, such a diminutive island held no importance to her.

“This island has always been a safe haven from that witch’s sight, a sanctuary from her evil magics” Carrion thought to himself as he remembered the times he had sequestered himself here to perform various acts of sorcery away from Mater Motley’s prying eyes.

Christopher would travel to the Rock to catch glimpses of the mythical island, Odom’s Spire, which was located outside of the normal flow of time that the rest of the islands inhabited, instead occupying the outlandish and impossible 25th hour. This strange time was necessary as Odom’s Spire itself was outside the normal bounds of reality, as it stood vigil over the islands while inside the sisters of the Fantomaya judge the past, present and future, and watch over the history of the entire Abarat.

“There is no way I’ll be able to overthrow that wretched hag and those she has recruited on my own, and these injuries will only make it more difficult…” he said as he began checking his slim, blotched, ashen skin. There were patches of red and purple discolorations on his flesh where being nearly crushed had wounded him.

“I will not be able to find anyone to aid me in retaking Gorgossium and the Iniquisit among the peoples of the islands. Even the nighttime islands would no doubt fear the ‘Nightmare Man’ as I have come to be known…no, I must look elsewhere for the soldiers I will be needing,” he thought to himself as he sat among the pebbles of Vesper’s Rock while watching the waters of the Sea of Izabella surge against the shore. 

“Though excluding the people of the Abarat, that leaves only the people of the Hereafter, though, after the spectacle she pulled with her ship, the Wormwood, and their fear of the unknown that was this land and it’s people” He said knowing those pathetic beings so used to their routines and simple lives would run in fear of such a creature as him.

Excluding both the Abarat and the Hereafter, there was nowhere else to find the soldiers he needed to retake the Isle of Midnight from his wretched grandmother. This meant that he would have to look elsewhere, places no one had thought of that would not know of him that could be bent to his will…He pondered this conundrum until he remembered a line from an Abaratian poet, a Bandy something or other, about Odom’s Spire, “Every mystery of the Abarat,” he said “has its solution here; every enchantment its source, every prayer its destination" Carrion believed that he could perhaps manipulate the energies of the Spire to find him his troops. 

“No matter where they may be, I will find my soldiers and they will bend to my will”. With these words Carrion unhinged the boat he used to get from Gorgossium to Vesper’s Rock, and began making his way to the majestic, powerful Spire in the distance.


“Just you wait, Grandmother, I will return…”