A metal fist is next, gripping rocks and pulling them out and over to the warrior’s side, widening the shaft desperately so that he can attempt to pass through. My father was a timid man and generally did whatever was asked of him.Ī sword comes clattering through the hole, spinning against the scree of rocks on the floor. The warrior kicks a giant with a timely boot, turning round to find my father’s eyes on him.
The sad eyes, layered with cataracts, are in fact covered with the spores of some unknown fungus the sunken cheeks are knots within wood the long beard moves and shudders with its own ecosystem of bugs, creatures and plantlife. The sad eyes, the sunken cheeks and the long beard - the entire face seems to be that of an old man - until the details begin to clear. As the eye travels up, past bark-like clothing and crushing clubs, the face can be seen.
Their skin - and again ‘skin’ feels ill-chosen – looks like wood, with lichen covering near every inch. With a clang of metal the armour moves aside and the view is clearer.Ī warrior is battling two hulking men, but ‘men’ seems too loose a description, as they are huge. At first my father’s view is limited to the metallic sheen of armour, twisting this way and that, allowing Wally to pick out the blemishes in it where dust has caked. Wally edges in to spy through the hole that the boulder has left. It trundles harmlessly away, but from the space where it came shoots a bolt of light. Unconsciously he coughs those strange words as he hacks.Īnother arcing swing comes at the wall, spinning a boulder out of the wall. For now, he battles through it, lifting the pickaxe to his grasp and taking an arcing swing at the wall. It is this thick, miasmic dust that no doubt killed my father. The thickness of the air makes his lungs heavy and he wheezes under the exertion. Wally works steadily at the wall, levering out rocks and staggering under their weight as he carries them to a mine cart. Wally was there at every stage, unquestioningly furthering the dark tunnels underneath Varrock, hand raised whenever overtime volunteers were called for. A sewer system designed for the Palace ballooned into a sewer system for the entire city. The sewer had been under construction for two years, the plans changing four or five times as King Botolph revised their purpose. My father performs the latter and leaves the house for what will soon become the Varrock Sewers. These anonymous deliveries are now accepted into his daily routine sitting flushly between the morning tea and the goodbye kiss on my mother’s sleeping cheek. With the cup of tea still radiating in his palm, he walks the paper over to the mantelpiece and places it with the others that he has collected over the week, mumbling the strange words to a tune he had long forgotten: Carlem, Aber, Camerinthum, Purchai, Gabindo. The sheet of paper, this morning, has the word Gabindo on it. This had been the routine for the past few days each morning, around six, the same boy would push a new sheet of paper under his door, scurrying away to – he imagined – place a newly-acquired pouch of coins under his pillow and sleep on it, dreaming of money piles and a scrappy ledger filled with tallies. The deliverer’s legs scamper away and past the window, where Wally glimpses him: a young boy tearing round with a broad smile and a leather pouch of coins in his grip. Fingers rearrange around the teacup, spreading its heat to cold tips and numb knuckles.Ī knock at the door nudges Wally from this half-slumber, and a piece of paper slips hurriedly under it. My father opens a sleepy curtain to the Varrock morning and spies a stray dog, its green-haloed head lifted and sniffing the air, picking out its acrid smells.Ī comforting trickle of tea flows down Wally’s throat as he watches the dog. As with all days, the light arrives on the cobbles and roofs of Varrock with a dusky green pallor, having travelled through the haze of Morytania. The incantation is one of these, and it is thought that only the most powerful of magicians know its true wording. Many details are thought to be unreliable at best, and often wrong.
The following is an extract from ‘The Tales of Wally’, by Waldo, Wally’s son - a book full of exaggerations and embellishments.