We decided that Ace was right. If
anyone would know, the Annumreale would. But then
there was the problem of finding them. The closest Annumreale
colony was in Pathis Glend,
so we quickly packed.
“Hey, can we come?” Ace said. I looked at James. “What? Why am I suddenly the authority
figure?” I answered honestly, “ ‘cause you’re tall, I guess?”
“But let’s ask Naru. Where is he,
anyway?” “Uh, hello?
I asked a question. Can Don and me come?” “Sure. Whatever.” Ace and Don slapped each other’s palms, a
custom known as “high-five”, referring to the five fingers of griffons, dragons
and humans. When you hit fists together, it is also known as a high five. There
was so much I didn’t know about the Lernalaban
culture. After we packed (Ace let me borrow some of his old clothes, and I
stitched the tail holes shut), we went to the Cygnus Ne
Therosima. Naru was waiting
there. “Hey, where ya
been?” Ace asked. “Sleeping, eating,
sleeping. I just can’t relax when you guys are around.” “Well, too bad, ‘cause we’re comin’ too.” Naru sighed. “Whatever.
I guess I’ll just lock my door or something.” when we got on the blimp, I
asked a guard where we were going. He said, “We are going to the Great Sky. It’s the
fastest way to gt to Pathis
Glend from here. It shouldn’t take long.” “How long?” I asked. “I’d
say a day or two.”
As we entered the airship, I saw a
large map on the wall of Falacia. I looked for the
Great Sky. It was an area of air used by many airships constantly. Pathis Glend was almost directly
under it, a small continent that didn’t have any cities or anything like that
labeled on it. “Okay. I know about James’
past, and I know about Ace’s. what about you?” I
asked Don. He looked surprised. “Me? I,
uh...” He looked at Ace nervously. “You don’t have to tell him. It’s okay.”
Ace said reassuringly. Don said, “I’d
rather not talk about it.” And I
left it at that. We were walking around the airship bored when Ace found a
door. He opened it, and found a game room. It was dusty, but it had games from Lernalaban, like Angraith, pool,
darts, and other games. It was great. All night, we played pool and told jokes
and stories. I wasn’t very good at pool (a strange game in which you strike a
white ball to hit colored balls into holes on a table), but it was fun anyway.
“Hey, wasn’t I supposed to be renounced, or like train or something?” I asked. “Yeah, but the guards told us that the brepidinal,
the head priest, told us that Elpha wanted us to take
you to open the locks first, and that all else ‘will come naturally’, or at
least that’s what he told us. And what Elpha says is
the utmost priority.” Ace said. We went to bed late. In my bunk, I took out
the object and looked at the locks. The were complex,
with faces and roses on it. I realized that they weren’t as much locks as they
were seals. A head swung upside down from the upper bunk and spoke. “Hey, whatcha
lookin’ at?” James asked. “The locks on this thing. It’s like sealed shut from both
sides.” “Lemme
see that.” James said. I delicately handed it to him,
he climbed down from his bunk and set the object down on my bunk. I sat up and
watched him. He was examining the locks and switches like he knew what he was
doing. He took a deep breath, and slowly, softly blew on the locks. He didn’t breath fire, but the air wavered around his breath. “What’re you doing?” I asked. “I used to be pretty good at picking locks
when I was little. I used to blow really hot gas on the locks, and slowly pry ‘em open. The heat would soften up the metal, and it should
break.” he pulled gently at the lid of the box. It wouldn’t budge. He
pulled a little harder, still blowing, but it wouldn’t move. Eventually, he got
frustrated and blew too hard. My sheets caught on fire. “WHOA!!” I shouted. “PUT IT
OUT PUT IT OUT!!” I jumped off the bed as he tried to pat the fire out, but
ended up only spreading it. He quickly jumped on the bed. “What are you DOING?!” I shouted, but a cloud of black smoke rose
from the bed. James sat up, and looked over the bed. “Why didn’t it burn you?” I asked. “I’m fire-proof. I know a great bar trick. Whenever I’m out of Lernalaban, I always ask for a cigar. I hate the taste of
the things, but it looks cooler. I light it, and then say ‘this is horrible’
and put it out on my tongue. No one screws with someone who can put a cigar out
with his tongue.” I agreed. “Plus,
chicks dig it.” he laughed. I realized that the white marble case was not
burnt at all. It was as if the fire didn’t touch it. I began to wonder if it
really was marble.
Whoosh! A scream whistled through the blimp. James
looked at me. “What the hell was that?”
BOOM. Suddenly, time slowed down. A huge explosion,
starting out like a scream, and finally dropping to an inhuman roar, destroyed
my eardrums. The ground fell out from under me, and then a great gale pushed me
down, followed by a fiery blast that singed my face. Not down to another part
of the blimp. Down. Out of the bottom. I fell, the
wind snapping angrily around me. A silence. The night
was calm, but a great, pulling, sinking pull ravaged my innards. The moons were
large. And as I looked below me, I could see Pathis Glend slowly moving toward me. I regained my senses. I
looked for the object. It fell silently, a single cloth of silk covering and
flowing all around it like an aura. I tried to move toward it. As it inched
toward my arms, my fingers reached for it, my eyes watering from the wind. I
grabbed it, and braced for the fall that I was sure would take my life. I felt
another hand grab my wrist. It was James. As he grabbed me, I felt like my arm
would pop out from the drastic pull of gravity. “Where’s Ace and Don?!” I screamed over the howl of the wind. “I don’t know, but Don can fly! They’ll be
fine!” I looked around in the sky, and a great black shape, covered with
long black spikes and sails was floating over the burning mass that was the
Cygnus ne Therosima. “What the hell is that?!” I don’t think
any of us knew. But another whistling was heard. I felt a tug, an I fell again. “James?!” I looked behind me, and saw that James had a
black, jagged spear through one of his wings. We fell, and he was unconscious. “Ahh!”
I screamed. I realized how helpless I was without anyone else. I felt a tug, a
strong pull that pulled me upward. I looked around, and noting was helping us.
Then I saw a shape, two shapes, really, and one of them had wings. I could see
a hand outstretched. The pulling began to wain. “Oh, God, pull!!” But soon, the shape fell. We all fell. I
began to question what had happened, but then I felt a crunch in my back. “AAGH!!” my neck snapped back, and I dropped the object.
My body was hell, but then I lost feeling. I only felt pulling and tugging, but
soon that faded to a tingle, and then left me completely. I lost my vision, and
all went black.
I looked around. It was all black,
but I think I was in the woods. I could see only trees, and I couldn’t move my
head. Oh God oh God oh God, I
thought. I wasn’t dead, but I soon would be. There had to be predators in the
woods. I would die. And I would be awake for it. But then, a
shape. A quick movement out of the corner of my eye.
Then another. And another. I
could hear a tiny scatter through the grass. And in front of
my eye, a foot. It had three toes, and black claws. I could barely see
black pads on the bottom of the foot. I couldn’t move my eyes, so I couldn’t
see the things face. But it walked on two feet. “Ishta mueineirna elmbisidrea?”
a voice said in a strange language. It seemed almost musical. “Guinierne. Hedrephanica olmartema
deprendesema.” another, deeper voice said. I felt
a pulling around my feet and wrists. And I was pulled off the ground. I decided
I couldn’t do anything about it, so I let sleep consume me.
“Uggh...” I moved around as I woke. I heard a gasp. More talking in the strange language. And
then a cold liquid pouring down my throat. I coughed, but my throat still burned. Well,
it woke me up, at least. I sat up, my neck hurting terribly. I looked around. I
was on straw, with a knitted blanket, the kind Entheen
used for mules. A little girl, at least I thought it was a little girl, was
leaning next to me with a small cup of clear liquid. She was soaking a cloth in
it, and she put it on my forehead. It was warm. We were in a wooden hut. The
little girl had black hair, at least down to her waist. Cloth was wrapped
around her middle, with a big leather belt, obviously way too big for such a
small person, was tied around her waist. She had a cloth dress with pictures of
flowers painted on primitively. The little girl had huge brown-green eyes, and
a small, (stay with me, I am NOT lying) almost canine black nose. I thought
this was a strange trait, along with her long (at least six inches) pointed
ears, but that was before I saw her tail. It was dark red, like a fox’s with a
white tip.
“Whoa! What is that?” all hopes I had that it was fake, that it was a decoration,
disappeared when it moved behind her back. “Oh,
you speak the common language?” she asked, with a strange accent. “Uh, yeah. Who are you?” I asked. “I am Yhavane.
What is your name, human?” I had to be dreaming. I had to. “I am Beldas.
Where am I?” “You are in Duenas Ravila,
the biggest city on Pathis Glend.
Do you have friends?” I thought this an odd question, but “Yeah! Did you find them? There were two
griffons-” “oh, you mean the two Griffoniniel and the
Drathieas? Yes, they woke up before you. And I
brought your present.” “What present?” she pulled out the object,
completely unscathed from the fall, from under my bed. “Um, what are you?” I asked rudely. “I am an Annumreale. You are human, right? Not
a mechanist?” I didn’t know what a mechanist was, but I was pretty sure I
wasn’t one. “Yeah, I’m human.” I
stood up, but my back hurt like hell. “Aggh!” I shouted. “You should go to bed. Here, thi’ll hurt real fast.” she took an insect and held it’s end to my neck. I felt a stab of burning pain, and then
I shook. I fell back onto the bed.
While I was asleep, Yhavane
and I had a visitor. Another annumreale,
one with dark grey hair, and a wolf’s tail, walked in. One eye was
green, and the other blue. His long ears were pierced many times, and he had
many scars along his arms. When he saw me, he hissed through his teeth. “Why did we bring that one back? He’s not
brethren here. We should leave him for the buzzards!” the taller (and by
that I mean he was only about four feet) one said. Yhavane
calmly said, “No, Ebaele. He is not like that, not one of
them. He
seems nice, like the griffoniniel we found. The blond one. He’s funny.” she said dreamily. But the wolf-like one
hissed again. “They disgust me. Let’s go.
He’ll wake up eventually.” the wolf one looked at my lifeless body one more
time, and scowled. He walked out of the hut, but Yhavane
stayed.
As I woke up, I groaned. I could
fell the numbness of a nasty welt where the thing stung me. I sat up, but my
neck didn’t hurt. I felt something worse. Thousands of tiny needles were stuck
in my neck. “Oh God, Oh
God!!” Yhavane calmly sat me down and
pulled out the needles one by one. “It’s
a special art that we invented.” she said. “You’ll start to fell pain in a few days, but you’ll be fine ‘till
then.” As she pulled the last needle
out, I stretched my neck. It cracked, but in a good way. “Thanks, I feel great now! But where are the others?” I asked. She
suddenly looked down and frowned. Her huge, expressive eyes looked sad. “The big green one is okay, and so is the
funny blond one, but...” she looked to the side. “But what? What happened to Don?” I
asked. “Well, he’s okay, but the medicine
men found something near the back of his head.” “What? What’d they find?” “A scar.” “So what? I got a bunch of scars.” “Yes, but he had a scar
from the Nullroth. We are worried that he is a spy.”
“How could he be a spy? Just ‘cause he has a scar?”
“No, you misunderstand. Those with Nullroth scars
have tainted minds. They have been touched with the vile instruments of the Nullroth. He will need an exorcism, but that is convenient.
We already have one tonight.” “Can I come?” “Yes you may. Come.” she got
off of her seat, and walked out the door. I noticed that she walked on the
balls of her feet. I followed her, ducked under the small doorway, and saw for
the first time the wonder of Luminusae.