9. Featherless Angel
"Lady Marahuté," began Knuckles formally, as his mind raced. What do I say now? 'Guardian of the Dancing Clouds'; does that mean she's my counterpart, who'd be keeping the Master Time Stone - what did they call it, the Chronos Rock? "I bring greetings from Angel Island," he said finally, "from the Master Emerald shrine, from which I have been sent to find the missing two King stones, and their tribes, and their Guardian Chaos. Seeking the air god's chao as mentioned in the heart of Mystic Ruins, I went to Gigan Rocks, which led me to Wave, who brought me here. I need to find the Chaos of air, whom I believe you call Angel, to tell me where the Chronos Rock can be found." He paused; the golden gryphon was shaking her head.
"I regret, honored Guardian, that we cannot help you. The Angel is here, yes, and I can introduce you to it, but the Chronos Rock was destroyed many centuries ago by the Babylonians themselves, when they sought to better control its powers and adapt them to their own ends."
Knuckles frowned. "It was my understanding, Lady, that the Angel would be able to repair the King stone, and use it to summon the rest of its tribe from wherever they hide. I, myself, have repaired the Master Emerald on two occasions when it has been shattered," - we won't mention that I shattered it myself the second time, - "and I thought that to be an inherent ability of the Guardian."
Marahuté tilted her head, regarding him intently. Evidently this was not an idea that had occurred to her before. "That . . . may be," she said slowly, "but to bring the remnants together is very risky. The Lightless Dark . . . ."
Lightless Dark? Where have I heard that before? Oh, my. "The Arks of the Cosmos are the parts of the Chronos Rock?!"
Wave, who had been standing aside looking bored, was suddenly as intent as Knuckles. "You're looking for the Arks? But they were lost after the battle with that dratted robot–"
"No," interrupted Marahuté quietly. "They were recovered, but we keep them separate and silent, so that they do not overdraw their power again. Why do you seek these King stones?" she turned on Knuckles suddenly. "They have lain vanquished and vanished these many long years, why do you seek them now?"
"Uh," was the echidna's eloquent answer. "Um." He took a deep breath, trying to remember what Uaxactun had told him. "Because a tribe came and went and another came and went and called, and these are supposed to call between worlds and unbalance things. Or we all vanish." He heard Wave snort, and wished miserably that he could remember exactly what the old echidna warrior had said. Because honestly he rather agreed with the swallow; it sounded very stupid.
The gold eyes narrowed, studying him intently. Then the elder dokan levered herself up from her seat and stretched her wings. Immediately the black gryphons rose to their own four feet, looming over the visitors, though they kept their wings furled. Marahuté said something to Kestrel, then said to Knuckles, "Kestrel will take you to a place to sleep tonight, and tomorrow I shall take you to the Dancing Clouds. Goodnight, Guardian of the Waters." Thus dismissed, Knuckles and Wave were escorted out by the patterned gryphon and the watchful albatross.
It was a short trip through the cave to the accommodations that the golden Guardian had promised, and Knuckles was tired enough by now to burrow into the proffered bed without really looking around. He was asleep almost at once.
In the morning, Knuckles was awakened by bright light coming through the windows. Looking out, he discovered that the cave roof wasn't complete; a large crack zigzagged along the center, allowing plenty of indirect morning light into the cavern. Several small figures crossing or exiting through the gap indicated just how large it was. Kestrel greeted him when he left the bedroom and offered breakfast, meat broth over a sort of pancake. It was nothing that Knuckles would have thought of as breakfast, but it wasn't bad. Noting Wave's absence, he asked after the swallow.
"She has gone to her house," answered Kestrel in surprise. "She would not stay in a guest house when she has her own."
"Oh. I didn't know she lived here," countered the echidna. "I thought she lived on that blimp with Jet and Storm."
"No. The Rogues travel in the blimp but they have houses here. The leader of the Rogues could hardly be a wanderer."
Knuckles had rather thought that the Babylon Rogues were wanderers, but chose to drop that topic. Instead he asked about the gryphons he'd seen the night before. "I was told that they were mythological. And how do you tell if you're talking about the four-legged gryphons or the dokan kind?"
"Ah. The gryphons are very rare now; the ones that are left live only here, in this cavern and two others. We breed them carefully to keep the lines healthy and only let them out to hunt. As to telling which is which, we," he waved a hand at himself, "are often called 'griffs', but mostly we just know what we are talking about. If you are feeding the cat, it is probably an animal; if you invite her for dinner, than she's likely to be dokan."
"True. So you're Kestrel the Griff, then? And Marahuté is the Guardian of the Dancing Clouds."
"She is the Guardian, yes. Although we usually call her 'Mara' – or 'Lady' in her presence." The other's beak parted in a grin, revealing very unavian teeth. "It is easier." The feather tuft on the left side of his head flicked like the ear it resembled and he turned to look at the door. "She is here. Are you ready to go?"
Knuckles gulped down the last two bits of pancake and hurriedly wiped his mouth. Kestrel had already gone to the door to greet the golden griff. Marahuté was wearing the same white robe, laced gloves, and sandals, but her belt today was gold, and she wore a wreath of flowers. In the daylight the white feathers flecking her face and wings were more visible, and Knuckles wondered just how old she was. The two black gryphons were there as well, and after greeting the echidna, she ordered him to mount one. It was probably a good thing that she turned immediately away, because Knuckles could only gape in shock. He eyed the black creature, and it returned the gaze with cool golden eyes. Kestrel tugged on Knuckles' arm and gave him a boost onto the back, with his legs hanging down in front of the black wings. Gulping nervously, Knuckles looked up to see Mara herself perched easily on the other black back. There's a neck strap under the feathers," she commented blandly. "I suggest you hold that. Nox can get a bit temperamental if his feathers get pulled."
"Oh," Knuckles fumbled for the strap. It was black, but lacked the purple iridescence of the feathers that hid it. He'd barely gotten hold when the gryphon jumped into the air.
Nox climbed rapidly over the village and up through the gap, following Mara's mount. Knuckles glanced back once, noted that Kestrel was following on his own wings, along with another griff, and then spotted the ground falling below him and decided not to look down again. Flying on the gryphon, with his seat heaving and dropping as the wings beat, was very different than gliding on his own or riding a hover board.
It was not a long flight, fortunately, and he had only time to ascertain that the mountains around him were completely unfamiliar before they descended towards a small forested valley. For a moment he thought that a swarm of tiny clouds actually was rising around them, then he realized they were white chao, a veritable flock of the creatures. Guardian of the Dancing Clouds, hmm? I wonder if Tikal then was the actual Guardian of the chao, and Chaos guarded the Master Emerald, only the roles got switched in the disaster? Chaos went mad because the chao were killed and the echidnas ended up guarding the stone. Or perhaps it was always a sort of dual job, and a member from each species jointly guarded both chao and 'King stone'.
As the gryphons landed, Knuckles did see a very familiar green and yellow shape dive into the pond, but nearly all the chao flocking around them were the white air chao. No infants, and only a single toddler in its pale blue and yellow trim, but a rather overwhelming variety of adults. There didn't seem to be much correlation between the colors and the types of chao he was familiar with; flying chao, for instance, were generally purple-to-pink in color, and similarly, the air chao with the largest wings (golden) were white, marked with pale blue and purple. However, another purple-marked individual dove into the water after the normal water-type, so . . . . I don't suppose it really matters. There are what, twenty-five types of adult chao, so probably the same is true here, and they all overlap. The question is, where is the Chaos?
Mara had a brief discussion with the other griff, who appeared to be a guard. Knuckles couldn't understand them but she was clearly giving orders he objected to. Finally, the guard signaled to Kestrel and the black gryphons and all four flew off.
"I sent them to wait on the mountain," the golden Guardian explained. "The Angel does not often appear to strangers - I am not certain that Lord Jet has even seen it - so it will be easier to call if there are fewer present."
Lord Jet? Knuckles stopped himself from saying it out loud; it didn't matter at the moment. "Wave told me that she had seen it," he commented. "What do you want me to do, hide behind a tree while you call it?"
She gave him an amused look. "Can you call your . . . Chaos, I think you called it?"
"I can call it. But," he admitted with some chagrin, "it only answers when it wants to. Tikal can call it fairly consistently though."
"Who is Tikal?" She listened to his explanation then waved him towards a heap of boulders under a squarefruit tree. Seating herself on a boulder she waited for him to do the same, then continued, "Tell me of your people, Guardian, and the water god's chao. Perhaps that will draw the Angel out of hiding."
So, Knuckles dutifully told the whole story, of Pachacamac's rise to power and excessive greed, of the attack on the Emerald shrine and the chao that lived around it; of Chaos' rampage and sealing. The next part was a bit uncertain: "I know they put the extra eggs in a cave, and the chao use it to store eggs over the winter, I think. And Uaxactun told me that the Guardians would take out an egg when they got old - the Guardians got old, I mean, not the eggs - but there aren't any left. I was raised by the chao, and the dreams that the Master Emerald sent me. I'm not really sure if they're ghosts, like Tikal, or what."
"They are reflections." He blinked in surprise at the certainty in her voice. "The cave . . . I do not know how yours was formed, but we have one here that was created by the Chronos Rock. There is no time inside, so anything stored there stays unchanged until it is taken out again. I doubt even echidna eggs could survive centuries and still be hatchable without being time-locked. The Chronos Rock also had the ability to pull beings backwards or forwards in time, in which case you would have been talking to this Uaxactun. But water can only reflect, exactly as things are if the water is still, or greatly distorted if it is not. So the Master Emerald can show you reflections of what is or was, or how a certain person would have reacted in a given situation, but it is not the real person or thing, any more than the greedy dog could catch the bone in the water in the old fable."
Knuckles suddenly remembered the shadow opponents he sparred with; opponents that fought exactly like the real people they resembled. "Reflections," he agreed. "So anyway, the eggs were preserved in the cave and Uaxactun became the first Guardian - oh," he interrupted himself, "that's how the Master Emerald knew him so well, and why he was my primary teacher." He frowned suddenly; there was a strange sort of feeling in the air, not a chill exactly, but...
"Most likely," nodded Mara. "So the Guardianship was passed down one to another until you got it . . . ." she urged.
Knuckles realized she wanted him to ignore the . . . whatever-it-was. So he continued the story of Doctor Eggman's crashing of the Death Egg onto Angel Island, and the arrival of Sonic and Tails, and the whole humiliating sequence that followed while he battled with them in the belief that Eggman was in the right, and the hedgehog and fox were the thieves. Then he skipped on to the return of Chaos, Eggman's decoying him away from the Master Emerald long enough to smash it, and the attack on Station Square, culminating in Sonic's using his Super form to knock Chaos out of its insane rage, and its realization that the chao were not dead, but thriving in their special gardens, followed by its return to Angel Island to guard both the Master Emerald and the chao.
As he got to the end, the strange feeling grew stronger, and there was a strange disturbance in the air in front of them, like steam evaporating but in reverse. And then, there it was. The Angel. The air god's chao, the Chaos of Air. The strange feeling faded but lingered, seeming to emanate from the creature like the chill off a block of ice. Knuckles hadn't really thought about it before, but abruptly he realized that Chaos had a similar effect, although in that case it was a slight increase in humidity. Is this the feeling of time, then? he wondered.
"Angel," said Marahute, rising to her feet and bowing slightly to the creature. She pulled a flower from the wreath she wore and offered it, saying, "This is Knuckles the Echidna, Guardian of the Waters. He has a question to ask of you."
A pink hand reached out and took the blossom. The huge blue eyes looked at the Lady, at Knuckles, and then down at the yellow daisy. Then the Angel folded the flower in its hand, hiding it completely, and offered its hand to the echidna. Knuckles put out his own hand, and received a sprouted seed. He blinked at it, then glanced over at the other Guardian. "This means yes?" he guessed.
Mara nodded. "A 'no' would have left you holding a dead flower."
"Hmm." Knuckles studied the creature, working out his next move. As with Chaos, Angel was much larger than a usual chao, its blue eyes on a level with Knuckles' violet ones. The markings on its feet were the same pink as its hands, but the belly was marked with peach. It was opaque, or perhaps translucent, like a cloud, in contrast to Chaos' transparent, uniformly blueish body. It also possessed a pair of long, fluted ears that gave it its rabbit-like appearance, white shading to pink at the tips. Like Chaos, it was wingless, and it had a golden halo hovering over its head in place of the normal chao bobble.
Knuckles took a deep breath and plunged in. "I was sent by the Master Emerald, the King stone of the Chaos Emeralds, to recover or recall the other two King stones and their tribes. I am told that the Chronos Rock, which rules the Time Stones, was shattered into the Arks of the Cosmos, but they cannot be brought together or they will call the Lightless Dark to destroy everything." He paused, trying futilely to gauge the effect of his words on the expressionless being. It merely blinked at him. Now what do I do? "Um, do you know how to rejoin the Arks without calling the Lightless Dark?" He wanted to kick himself. How is it supposed to answer THAT? Even if it knows how it can't tell me!
The Angel blinked again, then stepped back several paces. Extending its arms and its ears it gave the appearance of intense concentration . . . and the Rock appeared. It looked like a rock - a chunk of polished granite, with no sign of the crystalline appearance common to the Chaos, Master, or Sol Emeralds. Fossils appeared to be embedded in its surface, but Knuckles found he couldn't get any nearer to the Rock, to get a better look; the odd aura that surrounded Angel also surrounded the Chronos Rock, but far more pronounced.
"That is the Chronos Rock, Knuckles," whispered Mara beside him. "It's calling it up through time to show us!"
It was the echidna's turn to blink. Is that time then, that it's giving off? I hope it's not aging me as I stand here. But why is it showing us this? He opened his mouth to ask just that, but before he could the rock started to glow. Angel tilted it and the light it was emitting somehow shifted. Knuckles couldn't imagine how the creature was creating the effect, but he could suddenly see the power going into the stone. ("Gravity is really just an effect on space, Tails had explained. "When you move the Ark through space, it stores the energy of the motion and can then use it to affect space.") He could also see that the power was flowing back out, channeling off somehow. That makes sense, he realized suddenly. The Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald both take in power, life energy and emotions, and spill the excess out, unless we channel it for something else. Sonic and Shadow of course could call up their Super forms. He'd actually done that himself once. But usually . . . . Where does it go? The Chaos Emeralds just dump it into those dimensional pockets they hide in, I think, but the Master– Oh, of course, it supports Angel Island! Not just the floating, but the temperature controls and everything else, like the pressure and oxygen gradients that Tails was so concerned about. And the lava at the core, it must keep that hot too. It was rather awesome, even for him. He'd known all his life that the Master Emerald had enormous power and kept the island flying, but somehow it had never quite hit him just how much power that actually entailed. Wow. Now what's happening?
Something, from outside the vision of the Chronos Rock, had suddenly struck it. A large crack appeared along the base, and suddenly the energy outflow ceased, although power was still flowing into the Rock. Whatever it was struck it again, and a third time, and suddenly the stone fractured into five parts. They were unshaped and undecorated, but they were clearly the Arks of the Cosmos. Still the power could be seen flowing in, but not leaving. And suddenly they were gone, as the Angel lowered its hands and ears, looking quizzically between Knuckles and Marahuté.
"I see," murmured the echidna, "when the Rock was broken, it lost the ability to bleed off excess energy. But if it were restored it could drain it again?" The air Chaos nodded, then beckoned. Leading the two dokan, it moved through the valley - which was really just an enormous chao garden, Knuckles realized - until they came to a simple, thatched roof supported by 7 massive posts. Each post was a single, huge log with a niche carved into the side facing the center of the building. In the center was a stump about two feet high and three feet across, that had had the top hollowed out. Knuckles recognized the space immediately as a socket that would fit the Master Emerald. "This is the Chronos shrine." He looked at the posts. "The Time Stones go in there?"
Angel nodded. Then it pointed a pink finger at Knuckles, and at Mara, and mimed bringing something and putting it in the bowl of the altar. Knuckles looked at the golden griff. "I need the Arks. You said they'd been recovered?"
"Yes." She seemed to be thinking hard. Then she shook her head slightly. "I will order them brought back when we return to the village. It will probably be tomorrow before we can get them all and bring them back here."
Knuckles nodded. "That's fine. I get the impression that the danger isn't immediate, just growing. Tomorrow should be fine but next year might not be."
She gave him a faint smile. "I do not think next year will be necessary. Shall we go on then?"
Knuckles stepped back and bowed, courteously indicating that she should precede him. As they arrived back at the landing site, she pulled a thong with a shiny stone from where it had been looped to her belt. Swinging it around her head caused the stone to flash brilliantly in the sunlight, and shortly their escort reappeared. This time Knuckles managed to get up on Nox himself, and they returned in good order to the guest house. Lady Mara bid him good day and granted him free roam of the village if he desired, as long as he kept Kestrel with him. Knuckles opted instead to sit in the main room of the guest house and consider the day's revelations. And more to come tomorrow, no doubt.