Series 3 - The Runes of Awakening
Episode 5
Quest for the Rune of Nothagodos
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Our lives, you see, orbit around what we put into them.. just like when you place thirty-two berries in a bowl and take them back to your cooking pot, so too you will indeed retrieve thirty-two berries for your supper.. your life works exactly the same, and the lives of everyone around you. What you put in will always be what you take out, and the cycle of life continues. But once, there was no cycle. Once, there was no life. Just as there will be in the end, should it come, in the very beginning there was nothing......
"........For HUNDREDS OF MILES AROUND US!! Absolutely JACK SQUAT!!"
Rasputan turned around and looked like the dark blue pouting hedgehog.
"Of course... we're in a desert, dude.."
"WELL GET US OUT OF THE FREAKING DESERT!!" Cinos roared. "The rune can't be around here, it's completely empty!"
"The herbs told me so, the herbs don't lie!" Rasp announced, and he nibbled on his middle finger with an obviously confused expression.
"I think your herbs are as screwy as you are." Cinos replied quietly. Louder, "Do you even know where we are?"
"'Course!" the orange porcupine replied. On his right hand, a large mood ring changed from pink to green. "I am a MASTER outdoorsman! A MASTER! See, over there, take that cactus..."
As Rasp walked over to the tall cactus, Cinos turned around, scowling. It was then that he noticed the sand statue.
It was a lifesize depiction of some sort of reptilian Mobian, and it appeared to be made out of the desert sand itself, which was very odd, or at least something similar. It held a spear in its left hand and there was a horn on its forehead. It looked quite menacing.
"The heck is this?" Cinos asked.
"...moss always grows on the EAST side of it...." Rasputan continued from some distance away.
As the hedgehog approached the statue, something bizarre happened. The statue was now longer the colour of the desert sand, it actually began to brighten until its surface was a vibrant purple. And it blinked.
The same colour purple began to fill the scene before the amazed Cinos, statues that he never even knew were there, thousands of them, began to change colour. Although he knew now they weren't statues. Several hands fell heavily onto his shoulders, and the point of a spear touched the small of his back.
"This ain't too good, now is it.."
CHAPTER ONE:
The colours whirled. Every colour of the spectrum. But only in Sonic's head.
Sonic, the weak, parched shadow of his former self, was reduced to crawling along the desert floor. He'd dropped his empty water bottle behind the large dune which now made up part of the horizon, and his tongue extended its full length past his gums, as dry as the sand he was crawling on.
The first kilometre without water, he was kicking himself for misjudging the size of the desert, and for assuming that Cinos SURELY wasn't going to trek into it's heart, that he'd travel into a town or off the side to a scrub forest or an oasis. The second kilometre without water, he noticed he was no longer sweating, that the sun had squeezed the last remenants of loose water from his pores. It was about then that Sonic had begun to get dilerious.. thinking about the strangest things, such as 'wouldn't it be funny if the cacti could talk' or 'I wonder what the world would be like if the sky was green and the plants were blue'. This was bad enough, but now he was on his third kilometre without water, and the sky WAS green, and the plants WERE blue, and the cacti were singing "It's a Small World After All" while the spinifex shrubs held a tea party.
At least, they were to Sonic.
So now he was crawling, and the obvious threat of death never even crossed his mind. All he knew was that he needed to stop and maybe take a little nap while he composed himself. So, in his parched state, he did. And he fell asleep the instant he stopped moving his limbs.
It was impossible to tell how long Sonic had been unconscious. It was anywhere between five minutes and a day, but he came to upon the sound of talking.
"...thought he was in the cage.."
"..he is, it is another one.."
The voices were speaking in bizarre accents of nationality Sonic could not decipher. He opened his eyes a crack, and saw many pairs of purple feet. Very purple, very scaly feet. He tried to look higher, but couldn't.
"..the Great Shade must be very pleased with us! We must hold a great party in His honor!"
"Yes... get him up."
Sonic was grabbed by the arm and yanked up onto his feet. He howled weakly in pain as his badly sunburned arm was touched. But the pain fell away when something was shoved in his mouth. A bowl of water. The instant his tongue was bathed and reverted to its moist self, Sonic's muscles remarkably began to work again. He forcibly grabbed the large bowl and chugged down as much of the fluid as he could, making loud gulping noises with each swallow. Somebody grabbed the bowl away from him, spilling some water onto his feet, and he was shoved from behind to start walking.
He was able to get a good look at them, now. All of them were shorter than he was, but they carried very pointy spears. They looked like a race of pygmies. They were reptilian, though of a race Sonic had never seen before. Bright violet scales and yellow horns on each forehead. And their tails stuck up into the air and curled into a spiral at the end.
One of them was staring at him as they walked. It seemed to be younger than the others. Sonic looked at him, and he looked at Sonic... and then the lizard's skin changed colour. It changed from purple to blue - the same colour blue as Sonic's own skin. Sonic gasped and stumbled. One of the lizards wrenched him back to normal walking position, and another one poked the young lizard with his spear. "Don't do that."
"You speak english I see." Sonic announced. He got a sharp jab with a spear in reply.
He detested being pushed around like that, and their spears didn't really seem all that threatening to him. Only thing was that they had probably the only water he'd find for miles.
They walked for half an hour before they came to any kind of landmark. It was the base of a mountainous cliff, and there was a cave in it. A very wide cave indeed.
"Want me to go inside there?" Sonic asked. "Hey, no can do, dudes. I'm scared of the dark, and I can't sleep in strange places. Thanks though."
Nobody replied, but somebody started tying something around his head. A blindfold, made out of some kind of leaf. Another lizard grabbed his hands and held them behind his back, and pushed him to keep walking.
"Hey, pushy little fellers, aren't you." he commented.
The next fifteen minutes of travel consisted of descending and ascending and turning corners in the complete darkness of Sonic's blindfold. And it was very difficult. But he could tell from the voices and the noise throughout the cave that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of the lizards living there.
The journey ended when Sonic was given a violent shove, and he tumbled down some kind of slope and landed on rock. There was the sound of a door closing.
Sonic, hands now free, ripped the leaf off his head and checked out his surroundings.
Firstly, the cave was very, very big. It must have been a long way underneath the desert, because it was also very hot. But a different kind of heat to the aboveground - the desert itself was scorching, piercing, frying heat, and Sonic's arms, mouth and belly were tender and red, and would probably start to peel skin in great gruesome chunks before the week's end. This place was a humid heat that made Sonic break out in an uncontrollable sweat almost immediately. Another major difference was that, down here, the source of the heat was down, not up. It was coming from Mobius, not the Sun.
Also, it was being used, it seemed, by an enormous colony of the purple lizards, as their home and place of worship. Several different rituals were going on at once, down below. There were lots of smaller caves within this large one, and most of them were labelled. (Food and Supplies, Washing Facilities, Church of the Great Shade, etc) Some of the lizards were dressed elaboratly in white and black, despite the heat, signifying that they were probably quite important, and some even had followings of the normal, peasant lizards who were as naked as God (or The Great Shade?) had made them.
It was quite a spectacle, and an interesting place to be. Sonic folded his arms behind his head and wondered just how the heck he was going to get out of it.
The only way out of the small dungeon cell was the way he had come. All other directions led to an immediate thousand-foot-fall onto the mixture of hard stones and bonfires on the ground below. Trying to imagine which of these would constitute a more painful death made Sonic cringe, so he didn't.
The direction he had come was a steep slope which led upward. It was a large gradiant, but Sonic thought he could run up it with little trouble, it didn't go very far. Unfortunately, however, the top of the slope was guarded. Quite heavily guarded. And if he got past that, he would still have to make it past thousands of other lizards, while all the time climbing steep inclines to the surface. That much he had learned by using his senses during his blind journey from the desert to the cage.
At once his thoughts drifted to memories. He recounted the events leading up to his current capture.
It had taken two days of walking for Sonic to persue his evil twin to the furthest point south of Knothole he had ever been prior to the current journey. It was the bizarre aquatic ruin he had visited briefly the first time Robotnik had launched the enormous battleship he called the Death Egg. Back then, it had taken less than a single day to get that far, but this time he could only move as fast as Cinos, who could only move as fast as his porcupine guide, who moved like a tired snail. He rested there overnight, but didn't sleep in case Cinos went on the move again by night. He didn't. And Sonic had now spent two nights with absolutely no sleep. After that, they took off south again. The jungle around the aquatic ruin became steadily more and more sparse until it treacled into a sandy scrub forest, and then into a desert. There was a trail leading through the middle, but it still took three days of walking it before they came to Omega Lake - an oasis which housed a small one-horse-town called Dodge. It was in Dodge that Sonic slept for the first time in almost a week, and he did it without problems. He fell asleep at five o'clock the day he arrived, renting out a dilapidated room in exchange for washing the dishes, and woke up at noon the next day. For a horrible moment he felt sure that he would have missed Cinos, but he found his twin and the nutty porcupine loading up a camel that they had somehow purchased with no money. (Probably in exchange for washing the dishes, Sonic mused). Sonic, realising they were on the move again, went into a supply store and asked where the next nearest town was. The mink behind the counter replied that he had already TOLD him. Ten minutes of bickering later, the propriator caught on that this was the OTHER blue hedgehog he was talking to. He asked if he and Cinos were twins. Sonic replied "Sort of". He hoped that nobody in this small town had mentioned anything about him to Cinos.. if his twin knew he was being followed it would all be over. Apparently nobody had. The mink told Sonic that the nearest town, and the place Cinos was apparently headed, was northeast at Lake Alpha - the very similar oasis town of Newton. The shortest path to Newton was straight through the middle of the Crux Desert, the largest desert on the entire continent (Sonic also noted it as the place Robotnik had been banished after his arrest. He hoped sincerely that he didn't come across the labour camp.) But of course, not even CINOS would wander straight through the heart of the Crux Desert. Surely. He'd take a detour around the edge and come into Newton from the side. Sonic was so certain in this assumption that he decided, instead of taking this route himself, he'd continue to follow Cinos and the porcupine to be certain of their location at all times. The mink behind the counter gave Sonic a bottle of water as a parting gift and bade him farewell. Seventeen miles into the centre of the desert later, the camel prints led to a dead camel and two sets of Mobian footprints began. From here the story repeats itself.
Sonic couldn't remember how many times along this chain of thought he slipped into sleep. Some of those times he didn't even realise. The truth was, in that week he had had one proper sleep, and now his body clock was going haywire. Fate had stepped in to force him to stop moving long enough to rest his body properly. Fate was apparently trying to help him.
Fate.
That's what Cinos wanted to be.
That was what the entire journey thus far had been about. Cinos, twisted and insane as he was, had cracked an apparent scheme to become omnipotent - in fact, to SURPASS omnipotence.. to become fate. To control the very stimuli govorning the values held and the decisions made by everything and everybody, from the lowliest animal to the highest god. Mad. Completely insane. Especially since he thought he was going to do it by manipulating five rocks carved by some porcupine race from Mobius' history. Sonic didn't believe it for a second, so just WHAT POSSESSED HIM TO FOLLOW? Why had he risked his life on a journey to follow two maniacs around the globe? He had abandoned the Freedom Fighters in their struggle against the Aracks, abandoned his friends, including Tails, whose birthday he had missed completely.. why was he here, in the Crux Desert, enslaved by savage lizards? Why had he followed? Was it curiosity? An overwhelming desire to hamper any old villain's hairbrained plot? Did he actually believe that Cinos, equal to himself in every physical way except reflected like a mirror, actually had a chance of taking over the entire Universe from boundry to boundry, if boundries even existed?
"No." Sonic assured himself, and drifted into sleep.
CHAPTER TWO:
CLANG.. CLANG..
Sonic shot up. One of his lizard captors was banging on the bars of his cell from the outside. The hedgehog squinted, a little alarmed, until his vision adjusted and he remembered where he was.
"Time for eat." the lizard announced. It shoved the leg of some poor bird of unidentifyable species through the bars. Its talons were still attached, twisted in a bizarre angle, but it was cooked and it was greasy and it was food. And Sonic was starving. He stumbled across the room and grabbed the drumstick. It was the same size as an ordinary chicken leg, but its claws were too long to be anything short of a carnivore. Sonic gulped it down in two bites and began to suck on the bone while the lizard watched. They stared at each other intently.
"That's it?" Sonic prompted. "That was 'time for eat'?"
The lizard turned away and began to walk off. Sonic bolted to the side of the cage and grabbed onto the bars.
"COME BACK!" he yelled. "I'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN TO SALIVATE! I HAVEN'T HAD A GOOD MEAL SINCE I LEFT HOME! HOW LONG BEFORE YOU FEED ME AGAIN, HUH? YOU CAN'T KEEP ME HERE!! YOU CAN'T LOCK ME UP AND YOU CAN'T KEEP ME HERE!!"
The lizard walked out of sight.
Sonic stormed across the cell and kicked the bars as hard as he could. While he had been fairly cool about the whole affair, he was now angrier than he had been in a very long time. He was famished, he was hopelessly thirsty and couldn't stop sweating which made him even more parched, and Cinos was probably over the hills and far away by now, with a sack full of Armageddon Rocks and a wide grin on his strangely handsome face.
Sonic looked down at the floor of the cave below. What did these savages intend to do with him? Feed him to their god? Torture him with hot pokers? He gritted his teeth, and when he heard a loud crunching sound he remembered that he was still sucking on the drumstick. He pulled the jagged end of the leg out of his mouth and spat the sharp bone fragments out of his mouth onto the floor. Then he chucked the remains through the bars and hoped they hit some poor lizard on the head. He supposed they would see it as a sign from the Great Shade.
Time passed. It was impossible to tell how long. The light in the cave was not affected in any way by the sunlight outside, and the lizards probably didn't have any concept of day and night in their everyday lives. Sonic drifted in and out of consciousness continually, always waking up with a jolt thinking "Oh God I've got to get out of here and save the universe", then realising the impossibility of this task, especially in his current weakened state, and drifting off again. But something was happening in the pits below. Bonfires were being lit in circles, and the lizards were beginning to dance bizarre dances and get a lot more social. Sonic's hunger was almost unbearable by the time another lizard delivered his dinner, and the real action began.
"Dinner time!" the lizard announced, shoving another drumstick through the bars.
Sonic lifted his head. "You've brought his other leg I see." He crawled over and snatched it hungrily. "How about some water, huh? Would that be acceptable, or am I asking way too much, here?"
The lizard stepped back nervously and shook his head. "Uh.. sorry.."
Sonic grunted as he tore the last of the meat off the mangled leg and threw it to the ground like a wild animal. He stormed over to the bars where the lizard stood and grabbed onto them, scowling.
"You can't keep me in here for long on this." he said. "I don't know how much you guys eat, but I'll die before long if I don't get some water and some real food. I've walked further in this last week than you have in your entire life, hornface, and I need food and I need water. You hear me?"
"Well, I.." the lizard began. "You're not.. not really supposed to live as long as morning, really.."
"Oh, so you DO intend to kill me?" Sonic demanded. "That's your plan? Snatch people out of the desert and kill them?"
"It's your quills." the lizard replied. "They've taken you for the Great Shade.. I wish I could stop them, but you can't beat City Hall, right?"
Sonic stared at him, expressionless. The lizard faltered and stepped back a little.
"WHO IS THIS GREAT SHADE BLOKE??" Sonic demanded suddenly. The lizard tripped over, and the hedgehog kicked the bars of his cage as hard as he could.
"The Great Shade.." the lizard repeated, composing himself. "The supposed creator of all life.. and.. and colour. All the chameleons worship Him.."
"Chameleons?" Sonic asked. "That's what you are?"
"Yep!" the lizard replied. He walked up to Sonic and gripped one of the bars of the prison. Slowly, his skin began to change.. the colour of his scaly body began to change into that of the rusty metal.
"Wow.." Sonic murmured, forgetting his anger. He put his hand on the chameleon's arm, and the lizard's skin changed to blue around that area - fading back into the rusty red as it went towards his shoulder.
"Groovy..."
"It is, isn't it just!" the lizard replied, happily, letting go of the bar. His skin went back to mouve. "But we're not allowed to do it except for religious purposes.."
"What's your name?" Sonic asked.
"Espio." the chameleon replied. "What's yours?"
"Sonic..." came the answer. "Listen.. Espio.. Before the Technicolour Brigade caught me, I was on a mission out there. It's really, really important that I finish it, okay? It might turn out to be in the best interests of everybody in the world including you guys that you let me go.. You probably get the same argument from all your.. sacrifices.. but I really, really need to go."
"Hey!" Espio replied, throwing his arms up. "If you were a normal lookin' hedgehog.. with BROWN spines.. you'd be fine! These guys would believe you, no sweat, they'd probably even help you! They're awful gullible, you know. But you're.. you're blue. You're nothing to them except livestock.. a mindless non-believing vessel between a bunch of shallow people and their god."
"Blue?" Sonic asked. "What's THAT got to do with it?"
"Everything." Espio replied. "It's the basis of the Great Shade religion.
You see, we don't really get to see a wide variety of colours here in the desert. Orange, red, brown, the occasional olive green, but really, there isn't much to see. So the chameleon leaders reckon that, when bright exotic colours pop up, it's because the Great Shade is happy with us, and has given us a gift."
"So I'm a gift from God. Great, I can live with that." Sonic replied. "You've lost me as to why I must die now."
"Well, we're a race not too familiar with self-worth, I'm afraid." Espio explained.
"Chameleon leaders automatically class us as unworthy of any physical gift from the Great Shade, and say that the greatest gift we can possibly recieve is just the oppertunity to worship Him. Ergo, exotic colours like blue are hunted down and burned by the rising sun, regardless of whether they're alive."
The blood had run away from Sonic's face.
"You appear skeptical." he said.
The chameleon leaned right in and whispered in Sonic's ear.
"I don't believe in any of it. But they'd kill me if they found out."
Sonic sighed and walked to the other side of the cage. Looking into the pit, he saw that the chameleons were still setting up for some great event.
"It's an extra big party tonight." Espio called after him. "There are two sacrifices."
"This is gonna be a bloodbath." Sonic murmured.
"Espio, listen, you HAVE to help me get out of here.. PLEASE, not just for my sake but for everybody's. You can't let them do this to me!"
"I don't have any influence, though!" the lizard complained. "I really don't think I can help you. I'm sorry.."
He began to walk away.
"NO! COME BACK!" Sonic shouted. "COME BACK! COME BACK! COME BACK! LET ME OUT OF HERE! COME BAAAAACK! COME BAAAAAAACK!"
Somebody came back towards him - not Espio, but one of the guards protecting the entrance to the hall.
"Shut up you!" the guard warned.
Sonic scowled at him and shrank back. He couldn't stay there any longer, he had to get out of there. The first escape attempt would soon begin.
One side of Sonic's cage was under a thick layer of reddy-brown dirt. Sonic discovered this while he was passing the time, drawing little pictures in the ground with his index finger and then rubbing them out. Fifteen minutes of this activity turned his dirty off-white glove quite red. The hedgehog inspected the glove, and tried to rub the dirt off it with his other hand. No success - it was stained.
"This is the dirtiest dirt I've ever seen." he commented to himself. "Roll around in this for a while and this cult of killer chameleons probably wouldn't even WANT me."
He lingered on this for a while. Did he seriously think they would let him go if he just replaced his brilliant blue for ordinary dirt? It was crazy, it was insane, but it WAS a plan. It wasn't a plan worthy of placement in a James Bond movie, but it was a plan, his ONLY plan, and at that moment he decided that beggers couldn't be choosers and perhaps it was better to get to work instead of thinking about it so much. He threw himself into the moist pile of dirt like a pig in mud.
Two burly chameleon guards (short, stumpy and perhaps even a little scrawny in comparison to Sonic, but quite burly in comparison to others of their species) came to investigate after Sonic had been wailing for about half an hour. The purpose was to shut him the heck up.
"He'll be sacrificed in about five hours, after the ritual is complete." one of them announced to the other. "If we can keep him quiet for that time it would be good. He sounds like somebody's tearing his skin off in there."
The other guard approached the cage and gasped.
"Looks like someone has!"
Sonic was lying on his back, still yelling out incomprehensible garbage, and the only blue that was showing on his entire body was dull and in small patches. He was now mostly dirt-brown.
"PRISONER!" one of the guards shouted. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?"
"I'm SSSICK!!" Sonic exclaimed. "I'm DYYYYYING! I need food to restore my health... and complexion!"
One of the guards opened the door, and made a motion with his hand for the other to go and probably get help or something. Sonic didn't care. As soon as the door was open only slightly, he went into action. He thought that, after not running in so long, and being so long without water and food, he wouldn't be anywhere near his most nimble. Well, he forced himself. He jumped to his feet and poured on the juice, noticing only briefly the expression on the guard's face just before the exceptionally fast hedgehog collided with the door and, incidentally, him, throwing the portal wide open and winding the guard something chronic. Sonic blasted through like a bulldozer, slowing only slightly, and blasted right up the steep slope outside the entrance and down the corridor. He punched another guard out of the way as he went, and passed several. Nothing was going to stop him now.
(Where am I going?)
Zipping around a corner. He knocked another chameleon out of the way. And another. It was easy when he thought about how they had treated him. Now he was home free!
(Which way?)
Climbing a rocky outcrop, now... whooshing along a tight ledge...
(I'm lost)
Sonic tripped and fell in his haste. He rolled down a steep ledge, and OH the PAIN! Hard and pointed rocks hammered his sunburned skin. Skin which was hardly ever sunburned. The hedgehog was unprepared for the shock, and was lying motionless for two minutes before he realised he'd stopped moving.
Sonic was on the base of the cave. The 'ground floor'. The final stop. He was hidden behind a wall of stone, but he could see the shadows.. hear the chattering of an enormous crowd which suggested two things to him.
One: There were more chameleons down here than there probably were spiders in Terantulopolis.
Two: Oops.
He picked himself up, trying his best to ignore the throbbing pain, and to remain hidden, and inspected the area - searched for a way to get the hell out of there without a million lizards tackling him.
He heard muttering. Speech from the OTHER side of the rock. HIS side. He turned to face it.
There was a chameleon completely clad in robes approaching. He looked like a monk, and didn't appear to see Sonic. He was talking to himself and hurrying to attend something he was quite obviously late for.
"Three new sacrifices and now the Saviour has arrived!" the monk said.
"Surely this is a grand time.. a grand time!"
He looked up just long enough to see a large rock moving towards him at a large velocity.
CHAPTER THREE:
"The second stage of the ceremony may now begin." the monk lizard leading the congregation announced.
"All bow your heads in prayer."
Nine other hooded chameleons dropped their heads and clamped their hands together. If anybody was looking particularly closely, which nobody was, they would have noticed that the figure third from the right actually had quills under his robes rather than scales. Blue instead of purple.
"We call to you, Great Shade." the 'priest' chameleon began. "We pray to you. You have provided us with all the colours in this universe, and provided us with the ability to choose whichever of those colours we so desire. Behold! Our love for you, Great Shade, is immeasurable. Soon we shall sacrifice the most beautiful things in our posession in return for your pleasure. And surely this shall be the Final Sacrifice, for you have sent your Angel down as our saviour, to be transported back to our birthplace... in Heaven... in your heart... in the STONE!"
The word 'STONE' was said extremely loudly, and emphasised with the mad flailing of the priest's arms. Everybody else began chanting 'the STONE the STONE the STONE', and the hedgehog in chameleon's clothing, third from the right, chanted with less enthusiasm.
"NOW, PREPARE FOR THE CEREMONY! CLEANSE YOURSELVES, AND GATHER OTHERS!"
"YES! PREPARE!! PREPARE!!"
The chameleons scattered. Sonic tried to look busy and avoid suspicion. Exactly how he was going to escape by dressing up like a monk wasn't clear to him, but, in desperation, anything went.
"Master!" somebody shouted.
Sonic spun around. A young chameleon with strange markings painted on his face was staring up at him. The hedgegog pulled the hood further out so as to make sure his face was completely covered.
"When can we hear the messenger of the Great Shade in His wisdom?" the lizard asked, verbally capitalizing the "H" in "His".
Sonic was tongue-tied.
"Uhhmmmm.... later..." he said. "Cleanse yourself first. Go on. Rack off."
The chameleon was visibly distressed and confused at this response.
"Rack..?"
"Yeah, you heard me." Sonic replied. "Leave me alone, kid."
The lizard scurried off. Sonic didn't know how long he could tolerate this.
"So, how do I get outta here?" he mumbled to himself. "Most of these paths seem to lead upwards.. but how many of them led out of the cave?" Were there any more exits, other than the small outcrop he was dragged into? What if he never saw the light of day again?
"No." he said. "I WILL get out of this place. I will get out, and I'll find Cinos, and I'll follow him to the ends of Mobius, if need be, but I'll get out of this stupid cave!"
He stepped into another clearing. There was some kind of ceremony going on, here. An enormous bonfire was crackling away, and a crowd of chameleons were dancing around it. They had made their skin the same colour red as the dancing flames. It was quite a sight... the lizards danced like nothin gSonic had ever seen before, and sang a song without coherent words, but rather, sounds and tones. Above the fire, about twenty feet in the air, there was something hanging.. A large cage, bigger than the one Sonic had been trapped inside up until then. It swang from side to side, very slowly, creaking softly, while the lizards danced.
Sonic was watching all this in awe, and was shocked when a hand fell onto his shoulder. He gasped.
"Master!" the chameleon behind him announced. "How wonderful you have arrived! You should be leading the celebration!"
Sonic attempted to protest, but he choked on his own voice.
"Go on, then!"
The lizard gave him a supposedly helpful push towards the strange corroboree around the fire, but he faltered and stumbled, tripping over and falling on his stomach in the middle of the celebration. The singing stopped. The dancing stopped. Everything fell silent.
Sonic picked himself up and noticed everybody was staring at him. And it was very, very hot. He immediately pulled his head deep inside the hood, and tried to back away.. but the heat intensified.
He found out very quickly that a burning cinder from the bonfire had somehow landed on the monk's costume he was wearing, and now he was on fire, because the robes were very flammable.
Wailing, he threw himself on the ground and rolled. His sunburned skin was intolerable to the flames. Rolling, rolling in the dirt, as the chameleons around him began to frown, the looks of surprise turning into expressions of anger. When Sonic had finished, the fire was out, but his robes were nothing but a pile of fibres on the ground around him. His quills were singed, his skin was screaming in agony, and the lizards weren't very compassionate about any of it.
Sonic was thrown violently into the large cage over the fire, after an equally violent bath in a hot underground spring. He felt as if they had scrubbed three layers of skin off. But his quills, what the sacrificially religious sect was really interested in, were an even more brilliant blue than when he had arrived.
And now he was trapped again. Back at square one. Time running out fast.
He grabbed the bars of the cage and looked down. The celebration had resumed. Bright red lizards danced around a bright red fire. And the singing had intensified.
"Funny how you always bump into the people you don't like most often."
Sonic's breath caught in his throat. He hadn't said anything. Somebody was in the cage with him.
Slowly, he picked himself up and turned around....
WHACK!
Pain exploded on Sonic's face as the force of a blow threw him into the bars of the cage. He slid to the bottom, and somebody kicked him in the side, winding him. He never caught a glimpse of his attacker. No need. He knew the voice.
"Well Sonic, looks like I should have been walking BACKWARDS this whole journey, huh?" Cinos demanded. "I really, honestly did NOT want to be FOLLOWED! I thought I made that CLEAR when I trapped you in the Anti-Verse for what was supposed to be EVER!"
"You can't shake me off, clone-face." Sonic said hoarsely.
"Want a bet?" Cinos asked. "I predict it to be about... oh, say... two hours, or so, before the temperature of this cage reaches a point where you begin to roast alive, watching your own skin bubble and boil, and feeling your organs frying in their own excretions. I know that was a little graphic, Sonic, but they do appear to like doing things slowly, here."
"News flash, Cinos." Sonic murmured. "You're trapped here as well. Guess that means we really are equal. I thought you'd be long gone, but I was kinda dumb to think you were any smarter than me."
"Yeah, sad isn't it." the other hedgehog sighed, his attention turning to the goings on outside the cage.
"I thought I'd stumbled into a real doozie this time. But, it's turned out well for me in the end, like most things. Look!"
He grabbed Sonic's quills and tugged, snapping the hedgehog's head around in the direction Cinos was staring.
There was a large statue in the wall of the cave. The depiction of a giant chameleon, its arms raised in the air. And, in its hands, there was a small rock. Sonic had to squint to notice that there was a strange, unidentifiable marking on it, like a rune.
"That be the Rune of Nothagados, good brother!" Cinos said. "The first of the five stones I intend to recover!"
Sonic cocked his head. The marking looked like a jagged letter 'G'.
"These fools WORSHIP it!" Cinos continued. "They think their entire race CAME FROM it. And today, oddly enough, they think they're all going back to it, like some kind of chameleon judgement day! In the madness that's assumedly going to ensue, I intend to make my leave, nick off with the rune, get the heck outta here, and leave you to be sacrificed to the Great Imaginary Diety of Lizards. Foolproof, no?"
"Foolproof no." Sonic responded. "You're making a lot of assumptions, Cinos. Frankly, I don't think you have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting out of here, and especially not without bringing me with you. It's both of us all the way, whether we fry or whether we blow this joint is completely up to you.. whether or not you're going to decide to put aside our differences for just a...."
"DIFFERENCES?" Cinos exploded. "DIFFERENCES?? We HAVE no differences, Sonic! We're reflections of each other! We're equal in just about every respect! We're like poles! And like poles REPEL!"
He made a diagram with his fingers of two horseshoe magnets.
"If you're suggesting we team up, and I KNOW you're suggesting just that, because I KNOW what you're thinking, I ALWAYS do, then it's a physical, mental, spiritual, chemical and psychological impossibility!"
He pressed his face almost against Sonic's, now.
"I hate you. I hate you, Sonic, and I would like very much for you to die."
"Fat chance, evil twin." Sonic replied, not intimidated in the least.
"Only way you're keeping me in here is if you hold me down yourself, and it'll be a heck of a job swiping that rock if your skin is bubbling, and your organs are frying in their own..."
"I get the point, I get the point." Cinos complained. "Your-- OUR sense of humour is beginning to irritate me. If you're so desperate to make a pact with me, let's agree to SHUT UP."
"Deal." Sonic murmured. He glanced outside again. So, Cinos was trapped as well. He wasn't out conquoring the world as Sonic had feared. They were BOTH doomed to fry for the benefit of the Great Shade. Was this a happy ending, or a sad ending? He didn't even know what to make of it anymore.
An hour later, they were still trapped. While the heat had been bareable when he was thrown into the cage, now it simply was not. Everything wavered before Sonic's eyes. He heard Cinos scurrying around madly in the corner. He turned and saw his clone scraping great handfuls of dirt and rubbing them into his skin. He was cackling in the delight of his own genius.
"Tried it already, Cinos. They won't fall for that again."
The evil hedgehog groaned and threw a clump of dirt out through the cage bars. "This is so bloody annoying! You've already tried all the good plans, and screwed them up!"
Sonic didn't respond. He put his head on the floor.
"Do you have ANY idea how irritating it is for a villain to have an enemy with equal brain power? It's frigging annoying! And what's more, it looks like it's not gonna take anywhere NEAR as long to fry in our own juices as I thought it would."
Both were silent for the next ten minutes... then:
"HOLD IT!" somebody shouted. "The Great Angel of the Stone has requested to see the prisoners!"
Sonic's breath exploded in a rush of air. The heavy sigh from the other side of the cage let him know that Cinos was the same. The heat in the cage, at this stage, must have been above fifty degrees centegrade, surely. Sonic had sweated all he could sweat, and he was spiralling quickly towards dehydration again. His vision was already blurry.
"Get them down from there." a chameleon with some authority commanded.
"Well, THAT was an unpleasantly stressful experience!" Cinos announced. "I dunno about you, Sonic, but if I wore pants, they'd be quite damp by now."
"Could be out of the frying pan and into the fire." Sonic replied.
Cinos looked at him cock-eyed.
"After excusing your poorly executed pun, I'm going to assume you're referring to the possible homocidal intent of this Great Angel of the Stone bloke, right?"
"Bingo." Sonic mumbled as the door of the cage swung open, giving way to a crowd of reptilian guards.
"Maybe he's a cannibal." Cinos continued. "Maybe he's really hungry, too. Fe! Fi! Fo! Fum! I smell the blood of a Mobian! And maybe I'll convince him to eat you first. You always were the juicy one, I'll give you that. Your bones would make EXCELLENT bread, dear brother.."
They were both ceized and carried away.
"Whatever happened to shutting up, Cinos?"
"Yeah, well, I have a problem with keeping promises."
"Only when it suits you."
"Be quiet. I'm gloating."
Sonic, being dragged down the ladder which led up to the cage door, caught glimpses of his evil twin being dragged as well, equally unable to resist. In the Anti-verse, that hedgehog had been the ruler of a planet. Now, here he was, reduced to Sonic's equal again, making the same mistakes as he was himself, every step of the way. They were on ground level now, still being escorted, and rather brutally.
"If I end up saving this universe, it won't be for these guys." he said under his breath.
"Hey... pssst... Sonic...."
Sonic turned around and saw that one of the chameleon escorts, the one grasping his right arm, was looking directly at him with a compassionate expression. Though all the chameleons looked the same, Sonic thought he recognised this one and took a gamble.
"Espio..?"
"Yeah. Hi." Espio replied, and yanked him over a rock. The hedgehog stubbed his toe and grunted.
"Oh, great. It's the Freemind Society leader." he whispered. "Thanks for abandoning me, and furthermore for dragging me to my death right now."
"Ix nay on the reemind fay." Espio said. "What are you two, brothers?"
"No." Sonic explained. "No, not exactly. See, he's my evil twin. He was created two years ago by an ancient echidna device in the hands of a very stupid little man."
"Alright, no need to be sarcastic." Espio said.
"I'm not. That's what's really upsetting about this whole thing." replied Sonic, glumly.
"Look, bud.." Espio began, "I think you can make it outta here. Your brother, too. After the Angel speaks to you, you'll probably be dragged back to the cage. If I can be your escort, I might be able to sneak you out... It is a problem that there's two of you, though, because I don't think they'd let me take two of you back by myself, it would be too risky.."
"Espio, honestly, I'm telling you the truth here... that guy is up to no good. It would actually us both a favour if you went back and fried him."
Espio looked at him uncertainly, and then looked foward.
"Shh... we're there."
The hedgehogs were dragged into an elaborate niche in the cave wall, decorated hurriedly with all manner of colourful things which were surprisingly saved rather than sacrificed. There was a figure sitting on a throne, dressed in elaborate robes.
There was no movement except for the dancing flames of four candles. All was silent, until one of the chameleons stood up on a rock and bellowed,
"FALL BEFORE THE ALMIGHTY AND OMNIPOWERFUL PRESENCE OF THE GREAT ANGEL OF THE STONE, SAVIOUR OF OUR PEOPLE AND THE FLESH MANIFESTATION OF THE GREAT SHADE HIMSELF! FEEL HIS GLORY! FEEL HIS COLOUR!"
"Feel his colour, yeah right, like that's gonna happen." Cinos mumbled.
"So, you're the ring leader of this circus?" Sonic demanded.
The hooded figure, the 'angel', who could have been the angel of death quite easily, did not shift a muscle.
"You can't just sacrifice us." Sonic continued. "I hope you understand that. Frying us isn't going to make your god happy, it's just going to stink up your cave."
The angel raised his right hand. It was adorned with many rings of different colours, and one of them was even changing colours - the large dome of a mood ring. It shifted from purple to orange. He moved his finger in a 'come hither' motion.
"Orange..." one of the chameleons rasped in awe. "Curiosity... The colours have SPOKEN! Move the prisoners foward!"
Sonic and Cinos were nudged up against each other, and pushed right up to the throne, before the angel.
"Wait, wait.." Cinos whispered. "I know that ring.. that ring, I've seen it... where?"
The angel raised both hands to his hood.
"Where have I... of course! Dang it.. it's MY ring! I found it.. in the city.. in the Anti-verse.. and then... but then I gave it to..."
"RASPUTAN!" Sonic cried, stepping back.
Rasputan the porcupine grinned dumbly down at the hedgehogs after removing his hood. He laughed.
"Well then.. it IS you! Both of you! This is pretty interesting, ain't it!"
CHAPTER FOUR:
"RASPUTAN?? How do YOU pass as a freaking GOD, huh?" Cinos demanded.
"Hey, it weren't nothing!" the porcupine gloated. "I just wowed them with my apparently su-per-natural ability to control colours. See?"
He held out his mood ring. It was solid white. Pride.
"Apparently my emotions control all the colours in the world, or something. Oh, and look!"
He dug into his robes and pulled out a small bag of something. Opening it revealed a pile of white powder. He brought out a match, struck it on the arm of the throne, and lit the powder. It produced a tall, bright blue flame. The chameleons all gasped in wonder. Their skin brightened to the same colour blue, imitating it.
"Well, aren't you good." Cinos remarked. "Listen, I'm in a stew, here. Literally, in fact. Can you get me outta here?"
"Well, yeah, I could.." Rasputan replied. His eyes went from Cinos to Sonic, and back to Cinos. "But there's a problem, see.. I mean.. uh, uh.. I dunno if you're really YOU, man.." He nibbled on his fingernail.
"Don't know if I'm really me." Cinos repeated. "Power has made you even stupider, hasn't it."
"No, no, I mean.. YOU.. you both look exactly the same, don't you!"
The evil hedgehog gave Sonic a dark look.
"Ask me a question, then."
"Right!" Rasp replied. "A question! Uh.. uh.. okay... Cinos! Whichever one you are... WHAT... is your mother's maiden name?"
Both hedgehogs stared in silence for a while. Cinos' eyebrows moved progressively down his face into an angry frown. Promptly, he then walked off to his left, towards a chameleon guard. He grabbed the lizard by the shoulder, punched him in the centre of his face, knocking him over, and then began to kick him in the side.
"What are...?" Rasp murmured in confusion.
"I am VENTING MY FURY!!" Cinos screamed. "MY MOTHER, Rasputan dear, IS HIS MOTHER, YOU STUPID, STUPID.... STUPID LITTLE....!"
The other lizards embarked upon him, but Rasp held his hand out to stop them.
"I think that settles it, anyway." he said. "Only Cinos has a temper like that."
In reply to this, Sonic spun around and grabbed another lizard by both shoulders, bringing his knee into his stomach, winding him. Then he began to kick the base of the porcupine's throne, screaming with every kick.
"YOU--IDIOT--I--AM--CINOS--STOP--WASTING--TIME!!"
"Drat.. now you look the same again." Rasp muttered.
Cinos slapped himself in the forehead.
Rasputan's mood ring turned a shade of grey. He looked down at it.
"Confusion. Yeah, that's about right. Okay, okay, anger battle.. NOT working.. what else..?"
"Ask a question about the RUNES..." Cinos urged. "Sonic doesn't know anything ABOUT THE RUNES!"
"Righto then." Rasp agreed. "Name the five r..."
"Nothagados, Fleg, Nine, Shalpad, Awakening!" Cinos shouted at once. "Thank you and goodnight!"
Rasp looked at Sonic, who stood there dumbfounded.
"What was the question?"
"Now, STOP this BORING WASTE OF TIME, release me, and FRY HIM!" Cinos commanded.
Rasp raised his hand, but somebody grabbed it and stole his mood ring.
"YOINK!"
The porcupine was taken by surprise. "Wh.. yoink? HEY!"
Espio the chameleon was dancing around with the ring, grinning like a madman. "Hey hey, got your pretty colours, what'cha gonna do about it? Huh?"
Rasputan jumped to his feet. "GET HIM!!" he screamed.
Lizard guards poured in to apprehend Espio, who was jumping around nimbly. "Run!" he shouted.
Sonic and Cinos took one look at each other, and then bolted.
"Hey! Hey stop!" Rasputan shouted. "Dudes, quit it.. Get THEM!"
The guards released Espio, and began running after the hedgehogs. Espio turned and ran the other way.
"Hey! Get HIM! Get HIM!" the porcupine ordered.
The chameleons stopped running, and looked at him questioningly. He was biting his fingernails in confusion.
"Just.. just get SOMEONE! Get ANYONE! GET someone, dangit!"
The chameleons ran off in different directions, and Rasputan slid back into his throne.
"Ahh dangit."
"PSSST! THIS WAY!" Espio called.
Sonic and Cinos spun around. Several chameleons were bolting down the hall after them. They ran to where Espio was standing, and the lizard spoke quickly to them.
"Run down this corridor, go left, then take the second right and head towards the sunlight. But keep going!"
"This is where YOU get off, Sonic!" Cinos said, shoving Sonic from behind. He went sprawling on the ground, and Cinos ran away laughing. Sonic got up and poured on the speed, tackling his evil twin. The two went rolling around on the ground, wrestling, pulling at each others quills.
"You're going to stay TRAPPED this time, Sonic, I'll see to it!"
"Never, you lousy... CLONE!"
"CLONE?? CLONE?? I AM YOUR EVIL TWIN!!"
They both stumbled to their feet and began to run down the corridor, managing to make it all the way to an opening. They burst into the massive central room, where the sacrificial bonfire still burned and the cage still hung.
"Waaait..." Cinos murmured, shooting both legs out in front and skidding to a halt.
"Baaaah... mine!"
Sonic continued running towards the exit, but he watched his twin run in the opposite direction. He ran to the side of the room and leapt into the air... landing on the huge monumental chameleon statue, which he began to climb.
"No... he's going for the rune.." Sonic realised, screeching to a halt.
"Forget it! Keep running!" Espio shouted, catching up.
"He's done for! We can still make it out of here!"
"We?" Sonic repeated in confusion.
"Yeah, WE!" Espio replied. "You gotta be kidding me, I just assaulted the Angel of the Rock Thingy! They'll fry me for sure if I stay here!"
"Right." Sonic replied, grabbing the chameleon's hand. "Let's get outta here."
He took off, leaving their persuers in the dust, who immediately turned their attention to Cinos.
"STOP HIM!!"
The twisted hedgehog shimmied across the outstretched arm of the statue. Spears and other weapons were being thrown at him, but they never got high enough. He began to laugh when he reached the cupped stone hands, and stared face to face with the sacred rock that the lizards worshipped. A small stone, flat on both sides and smoothed on two edges, the other edges jagged and rough. On one face was carved a simple symbol, almost like a capital "G", only composed of straight lines, no curves.
He grabbed the stone with one hand and grinned evilly. "The Rune of Nothagados.." he snarled. "One down.. four to go!"
He looked down at the ground. A crowd of angry lizards had gathered, throwing spears into the air and shouting loudly.
"Sorry I can't stay for the party.." Cinos said, and he jumped off the statue, falling into a mid-air spin-dash...
"Quick!" Espio shouted. "Quick! Quick!"
Sonic climbed through the small hole from which light from outside was streaming. Until he saw the light, he didn't realise how dark it had been under the ground.
"I'm going as fast as I can!"
His head poked out into the world of the aboveground. He was climbing through a tiny burrow in a particularly rocky part of the desert. His shoulders came through, then his left arm, then his right arm, and he pulled himself up onto the sand. Turning around, he helped Espio out.
"Wow!" The chameleon exclaimed. "That.... sucked!"
"Ooooh GOD it's good to be out of there.." Sonic said, stretching his arms out towards the sun.
"I've never had anybody try to ritually sacrifice me before.. that was a bit of an adventure."
"Shhh.. I hear something.."
The hedgehog and the chameleon climbed up onto a rocky outcrop, and crawled to the opposite edge.
Cinos sat just below them. He was battered and bleeding, but otherwise alive. And he was admiring the rune he had successfully stolen.
"Hey! He's got the... rock... thingy!" Espio exclaimed. Sonic shushed loudly, and the lizard shrank back a little.
"That's the Stone of the Great Shade!" Espio whispered. "What does he want THAT for?"
"It's a long story." Sonic whispered back. The two of them crawled backwards and sat atop the rock.
"Feel like a long walk, Espio?"
The lizard looked at him cock-eyed. "How long?"
"As long as it takes." Sonic replied, reclining on the rock. "I'm following my evil twin around Mobius so I can thwart him if he tries anything. It's kind of an adventure."
"I guess.." Espio replied, still uncertain. "What's the plan?"
"Well, first we need supplies. There's a town called Newton, it can't be far now, which is where I was headed 'till this little intermission. He's going there as well. I'm going to stock up, work out where his next destination is, and try to beat him to it. I've gotta get some kind of organization going, here.. following him around blindly isn't really working. I'll try to learn more about these darn runes, if I can. So... you with me?"
He held out his hand. Espio stared at it for a long time, and eventually reached out to shake it. "I'm in. Anything to get away from those lunatics down there."
"And I could use the company." Sonic added. "Well.. let's be off, then!"
Cinos frowned and rubbed his sore head.
"Ouch. Dang... power comes at a price."
Something dropped down behind him. SomeONE. He heard a thump and a grunt.
Rasputan the porcupine, dressed once more in nothing but his cargo pants, sneakers, hair ribbons and mood ring, brushed himself off and waved briefly.
"Hey... what are you doing here...?" Cinos asked.
"We gonna go find those runes, or what?" Rasp asked. He was avoiding the question with another question.
"Yeah, but aren't you those guys' GOD?" the hedgehog said.
"Mreh. Well, just the flesh manifestation of a god. Besides, crud happens. Heey.. you got the rune!"
"Uh huh." Cinos replied, admiring the stone. "The Rune of Nothagodos... the marking represents truth, honesty, purity and all that other crap, if I remember right. Not that it matters. Let's get the heck out of here. But prepare to die if you lead me into another freaking desert."
"Hey, you the man!" Rasp chuckled, throwing his arms up. "Let me just check the herbs..."
The sun set as usual over the Crux Desert that night. Four figures alone moved silently over the landscape, two intending to destroy, and two intending to protect.
And so, my friends, the cycle went on. Another adventure ended while another began, all adding to the great cycle of life.. and life went on, and the journey went on. But that's for telling at another time - for now, the candles grow short and the flames die down. It is time for rest.
THE END