| "The Adventures of Kat and Clara" Part VII: The Illusionary Mask The sun shone on the mountain, generating some additional warmth for such a windy and snowy morning. Still enchanted by Isengrim's spell, Kat, Clara, and Salem pressed on, trudging up the mountain together through the ankle-deep snow. "How much further?" Clara asked, running out of breath. "Only a few hundred more feet," Kat assured her, the snow clumping against her legs and feet. "We are almost there." The three panthers continued on until finally reaching the building they saw only an hour earlier. The edifice was small and mildly decorated with some designs signifying nature and beauty. It was a wooden building, constructed entirely from trees cut down from the mountainside. "Who do you think lives here?" Clara asked, approaching the door with Kat and Salem. "I know not," Kat said, "but maybe they can help us find the rest of the parts of the sword. We still are obliged to find them." Kat knocked on the door three times, then stepped back to wait. A short moment later, it opened. Before her stood another older man in a red robe, a tiger whose age was probably twice that of Salem's. His robe also contained a hood that shrouded his head. "Hello," he said, in a deep voice. "I've never seen you here before. What is your name?" "Good day, sir," Kat said, smiling. "My name is Kat, and I come from the Plains of Clay from the East. Behind me is Clara, who lived with me there, and Salem, from the Valley of Fate." "What brings you all to my mountain dwelling?" the tiger asked. "We come on a quest from S'Allumer," Clara said. "We were sent to return the world to its once utopic state." "You?" the tiger asked, confused. "You were chosen by S'Allumer? That is indeed a great responsibility." "We are looking for the elements of the Sword of Many Parts," Kat said. "Do you know of what we speak?" Kat reached into her bag and gathered the parchment scroll and unraveled it to show to the tiger. "This is the drawing of the sword; it indicates all of its parts." The tiger looked closely at the parchment. "I seem to remember something like this several years ago," he said, looking intently at the drawing. "Does any of this look familiar to you, sir?" Clara asked. "Yes," the tiger answered. "The blade, particularly. I recall once seeing one of its halves." "It is important to us, sir," Kat said. "It is a great task to find this sword, for it will aid us greatly in our quest." "Why don't you come into my home?" the tiger said. "I will make you comfortable and tell you what I know." The tiger, who soon after introduced himself as Relnor, brought Kat, Clara, and Salem into his small home and fed them. Afterward, he instructed them to sit down on his floor. "So," Clara asked, "what can you tell us about the sword?" "Much, Clara," Relnor said. "That sword once was part of my home, too. At the very least, one half of the blade was." "What happened?" Kat asked. "It was so long ago," Relnor said. "I was only then 24 years of age; back then, I was planning to marry another woman I knew from my education. Others lived around me then; there was once a great village, but a great event that I will never forget occured here that changed my life forever. "One morning, I awoke to the sound of little children playing together in the river not too far from here, down the mountain. After dressing myself, I went to see what was happening down there; they seemed to be fighting over some sort of object they had found there. I went to ask what it was, and they showed it to me. It apparently was half of a sword's blade, cleaved cleanly at what I approximated to be the middle. On it's surface were some strange runes that even I, as a scholar, could not read for the life of me. I told the children that I would take the sword home and study the arcane language scrawled on the blade, promising to return it to them the following day. Even as young boys, they still agreed. "That day, I sat with all my books, trying to translate the phrase written on the steel. I could not understand it, no matter how much I researched its unique language; not even my lover could comprehend it. The same night, I went to sleep, while the blade rested on my desk, surrounded by my clutter of books. Next page >> |