A/N: Hi I'm a silly bugger who's scared of posting chapters, but Demi threatened me and forced me to do it. :c Thanks for all the support, guys! I hope I'm able to give you a decent story. If not... Well, I tried. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 13
The Art of Prophetic Dreams
Who knew it was so easy to get lost in a monastery?
When Charla had first stepped out into the hallways beyond their tiny room, she'd expected to see pangolins everywhere. But all she'd found was an empty corridor. Past closed curtains and quiet rooms, she'd eventually come upon a spiralling stairwell, whereupon she'd heard the first signs of life. Singing.
At least, it sounded like singing—a distant, rhythmic drone, like insects humming together somewhere deep in the forest. She'd coiled down the stairwell in search of it and come out into another maze of empty corridors, where the rooms were bigger and the doorways were closed off by fancier curtains—the sort of curtains that had weird patterns woven into their threads. As the humming drew louder, she'd had the guts to peer a single eye through a gap between drapes and almost gasped aloud.
There were pangolins in there. They were lined up in rows, tens of them, all kneeling with their backs to her and murmuring together in low, musical tones. As she watched, they bowed and straightened up again, touching their foreheads to the floor, curling and uncurling themselves in an endless rhythm as if it were a dance. With her mere sliver of view, she could just make out part of a painting that covered the far wall—a mural of the forest, perhaps, and a glimpse of a pair of slender legs with sharp cloven hooves. At its base, a small wooden table held a small wooden bowl, and from it wafted a gentle curl of sweet-smelling smoke.
Charla watched for a moment, listened to the rise and fall of their chanted song, and then forced herself to step away. Whatever was going on in there, she knew it was something she couldn't interrupt. She would just have to find other pangolins.
But that was when she started to get a little lost. She slunk up and down winding corridors and twisting stairwells, past bridges and platforms that stretched out into the cold wet darkness, past walls that crawled with tiny weird lizards whose dotted yellow patterns glowed like embers, and there were no other pangolins to be found. And when she eventually stumbled out into the Great Hall—that cavernous space she remembered from last night—it, too, was empty.
She scampered across it with exaggerated leaps and bounds, darting amongst the long low tables, enjoying the ringing echo of her claws as they clacked against the wooden floor. Then she left that place behind as well, and found herself in the small entrance hall with the huge statue in the centre.
The rain was louder now, singing its static song through the open windows, and the sky outside was not as dark as Charla remembered. A little thread of worry twisted a knot inside her stomach. She ignored it and made a beeline for the closed doors across the way.
As she did, however, the statue caught her eye. She'd hardly noticed it last night, what with the pangolins around to distract her, but now she found that there was something oddly familiar about it. It was certainly not a pangolin. It had a long serpentine tail with a tuft of perfectly coiffed fur; four slender legs with dainty cloven hooves; a pair of enormous antlers that crowned an oddly draconic head, its sharp branching tines almost brushing the ceiling...
Charla circled around it and stared wide-eyed into its face.
It looked just like that creature she had seen in the forest—the one that had saved her from the dryads—right down to the tiny flowers growing on its antlers.
But that had just been an illusion, hadn't it? It hadn't been real.
At least, that's what Lance had said.
She squinted up at the statue, pulled a face, and poked her tongue out, but its eyes of golden wood remained frozen in their eternal stare. Charla shrugged and looked down at its hooves. A single word had been engraved at the front of its dais.
Qilin.
That word... She'd heard it before. It was the name of the lake they were heading towards—and also part of something Pema had called them last night. Children of Qilin. She'd never gotten the chance to ask what that meant. Now, staring at this statue and the word carved beneath its hooves, she wondered if that could possibly be this creature's name.
What a weird name. And what did this strange creature have to do with her and her friends and some random lake, anyway?
A spiky ball of irritation clawed its way up her throat. Charla lashed her tail, tore her eyes from the statue and stalked away. Too many questions and not enough answers... She needed to find a pangolin, and she needed to find one now.
But when she shouldered her way through the doors and out into the open air, all she found was darkness and rain. She stopped in the doorway, catching her breath. It was definitely lighter than it had been before, enough that she could make out the individual dark shapes of trees encircling the lake-like clearing beyond the monastery. Puddles of light—moonlight, or perhaps a hint of the breaking dawn—rippled and danced over this circle of forest floor, illuminating raindrops like tiny crystal shards in the night. A chill wind whispered through the leaves.
Charla shivered. She looked down, letting her eyes follow the twisted roots to the muddy earth, but her gaze was soon drawn upwards. Up, past the dark and rising tree-trunks. Up, through the inky tangle of bough and branch, through the glistening wet lattice of leaves, to that tantalising glimpse of clouded sky.
She hardly thought. Her wings spread of their own accord. She leapt.
And then she was rising—rising through the darkness and the rain, past the glistening golden eyes of the monastery, reaching for the treetops. The earth fell away beneath her, the leaves brushed her scales with wet fingertips, and then at last she was part of the sky again.
She closed her eyes and twirled—and when she opened them again, even the canopy of the forest lay beneath her. Above her, there was nothing but sky. It was an open, endless canvas, splotched with grey clouds turned silver by the light of a low-hanging green moon, and the darkness of night was melting away, leaving the stars to fade shyly out of sight. Charla laughed aloud as she spread her wings and hung there above the world, ringed by a halo of misted rain. She couldn't remember the last time she had touched the sky—the last time she had felt so free, so alive.
But then she cast her eyes towards the horizon, saw what awaited her beyond the forest, and her high spirits fell back to earth with a bump. Something inside her twisted and shrank. A mixture of fear and awe swelled in her chest and lodged in her throat, and finally she felt the chilling cold of the rain on her scales.
Because there was nothing awaiting her. Nothing but the unbroken swell of deep, dark green—the rolling waves of the great ocean that was Whisperglade.
From horizon to horizon, it went on forever, allowing only the tallest trees to break free of the swell and reach their spindly fingers towards the sky. Charla twisted in the air, the breath thick in her throat. There was no sign of the river, let alone that elusive Lake Qilin, and nor was there any hint of those green northern plains from whence they had come. There was no glimpse of the dry lands north of Pyreflight, which should have been somewhere to the east, nor of the western grasslands that spread from the foot of the Westwing Range.
There was...nothing. She was a sailor adrift in a great sea, and land was but a distant memory, a hopeless yearning. Were those the ghostly shadows of mountains far beyond her sight, or was that just wishful thinking? With only the fading moon to light her way, she couldn't tell.
A shaky breath shuddered from her lips. They really were lost...
Charla shook herself and looped through the rain, scattering it from her freezing wings. Then she dived for the gap in the canopy, leaving the empty sky behind and her worries with it. The pangolins would guide them. They would not be lost in here forever. They couldn't be.
But still she tore her eyes from the clouds and the blank horizon, and refused to think of it any longer.
She was very wet by the time she landed. She hadn't aimed for the ground, but had instead taken her time looping amongst the platforms and balconies of the monastery, until her frozen wings had forced her to alight on a bridge halfway between one tree and another. It was an odd bridge—as though someone had repurposed a very large branch, carving it flat and erecting railings of vine along its edges. It even curved slightly, and its damp wood seemed to flex under Charla's paws. She extended her claws to stay steady.
Now, she thought as she glanced both ways, she had something of a dilemma. It occurred to her that the sun was probably starting to rise, and—after all of this—not only had she not found a pangolin to talk to, but she'd gotten herself so turned around that she had no idea how to get back to her friends. She'd been banking on the hope that, once she found a pangolin, they would be able to lead her back again. But if she couldn't even find one...
She pulled a face. Stupid. There was still time. If she knew Lance at all, he'd probably sleep until midday. And there was still plenty of monastery she hadn't yet searched for pangolins to talk to. She just had to stay positive.
And so she turned on her heel, picked a tree at random, and marched across the bridge towards it. The whole thing swayed as she walked, creaking in the wind, and a little thrill of excitement jittered down Charla's spine. She grinned and broke into a run. Her paws pounded the bridge, rain splashed up her legs, and for a moment she felt like she was still flying, her wings half spread, her stomach left behind.
Then the dark mouth of a doorway in the tree opened wide to engulf her, and she skidded to a halt. Shaking the water from her wings, she peered into the gloom and then stepped out of the rain.
The corridors here were darker than the others had been. There were no windows, and the feeble light from outside did not spread far beyond the doorway. A cloying silence seemed to reach for her, enfolding her, and there was a strange sense that hung in the air alongside it. It was a tingling, electric feeling—one that made her think of magic and spirit gems.
She hesitated at the threshold, trying to see through the darkness.
There was a faint shimmer just ahead, a circle of golden light that did not belong to the sun or the moons. Charla padded towards it. Whispers of rain echoed after her, melding with the sound of her pawsteps.
Something felt different here... Different to the rest of the temple. She couldn't explain it.
Before her eyes, the shimmer down the hallway took on shape and form, and Charla slowed as she reached it. How strange... It looked just like a big droplet of tree sap, oozing out from the walls like golden blood—yet it shone almost as brightly as spirit gems. When she squinted, she could make out faint ribbons of pastel colour twisting inside of it. She raised a paw, hesitated, and then touched it.
Warmth rolled up her foreleg. The sap wasn't wet. It was hard and smooth, like glass or crystal, and warm as a summer breeze. The faintest hint of magic tingled between her claws.
She resisted the urge to tighten her grip and shatter it like a spirit gem. She was imagining it, surely... Why would there be magic inside a frozen drop of tree sap?
Shaking herself, she let her paw slip from the glassy droplet and backed off. Then she turned to face the gloom, and a warm shiver trailed all the way down her spine. Now that the outside light had left her eyes, she could see clearly—and she saw that there was golden sap everywhere. There were not just droplets of it; there were whole streams of it, trailing down the twisted tree walls, lighting the darkness with a faint amber glow. It seemed to call her onwards.
Charla held her breath, paws tingling, and stepped forward.
She walked slowly, trying not to make too much noise, because there seemed to be something sacred about the silence that existed in these corridors. As she went, hearing only her own pawsteps and the breaths shivering from her lips, she began to notice other things. Small patches of fungi on the walls, which glowed in pale shades of blue, pink and yellow; little insects scuttling amongst these feathery growths, their round bodies winking with dim light; more lizards like the ones she'd seen before, whose shining patterns turned red with warning whenever she drew too close.
It was like she had stepped into another world—and, away from the sun, these strange things shone as brightly as stars and moonlight. Charla didn't even need fire to light her way.
Now and then, her wandering paws took her past tiny rooms within the corridors, so small that they were little more than shallow alcoves. Each of these was furnished with nothing but a square of woven mat on the floor, their walls ringed with droplets of golden sap. Once, Charla stepped into one and sat down on the mat, and for a few eerie moments she felt like she was somewhere else entirely—a different time, a different place, a different life.
She left quickly, feeling like there were lost spirits whispering around her head and a tingle of strange magic twisting down her spine.
Eventually, she came upon a stairwell and let it guide her upwards, higher into the tree. Even here, sap and fungi lit her way, throwing their pastel light into the gloom. Step by step, she climbed. She had stopped hearing the rain a long time ago, and all was quiet now, like the tree itself was holding its breath.
Then, at last, she stepped out onto the landing of a higher floor and turned her head. A great open space yawned wide before her, lit by nothing but sap shimmering low on the walls. Above her, the ceiling was a gaping black void that seemed to go on forever, as if she could fall into it and never be seen again.
On silent paws, she crept into the chamber. Her footsteps echoed through the empty space. Was she alone here? She could just make out the distant glimmer of the sap on the far wall, but it did little to illuminate the darkness.
Why were there no windows? What was this place?
For some reason, Charla quivered with the sense that she was breaking some rule by being here, as if this place was meant to remain undisturbed. Even the sound of her own breathing seemed too loud.
She inched closer to the nearest river of amber, finding comfort in its warm light—and, as she did, she noticed something on the wall.
A picture. There was a picture carved into the tree. It wasn't much bigger than her paw, but in the faded glow she saw that it looked just like a dragon. It was only a small dragon, young and round with baby fat, its horns like lightning bolts, and carved beside it was some kind of large four-winged insect. Charla tilted her head one way and then the other, but made no sense of it.
Then she crept on and realized with a shiver of wonder that there were more carvings—hundreds of them, even. There were so many that they covered the walls, their dark lines revealed in the light of nearby crystal droplets. She circled slowly around the room, craning her head to see each one, watching the carven scenes play out before her eyes like a storybook she didn't understand. She saw dragons, eggs, pangolins, sky serpents, even apes—and other, more abstract things, like a path lined with trees or a temple surrounded by enormous mushrooms, or a volcano spewing fire into the sky.
Some things were familiar—she saw a city skyline that could have been either Warfang or Pyreflight, and a silhouette of a dragon that was surely the Terror of the Skies—but it was on the far side of the chamber where she found something that made her paws slow and her breath stop.
It was a mountain. A single dark peak was rising alone into the sky, its apex split into lines of jagged fangs like the gaping maw of some great stone dragon. Above it, two moons were coming together as one.
Charla stilled, her heart pounding in her chest.
She knew the Well of Souls when she saw it. It was impossible not to recognise it. And the eclipse, too... It was just like her dream—everything except the jackals and the pillar of violet flame that erupted from its peak. This was a carving of her own nightmares.
Her paws tingled. She felt cold.
Why was this here? Who had put it here? ...Why?
This shouldn't have been possible. She'd told no one about her dreams except Lance, and yet here was an image of the very thing that she had seen—here in some strange temple in the middle of this alien forest.
Was this magic? A premonition? A prophecy?
She reached out to touch it, to see if it was even real, and the wood was smooth and solid under her paw; her claws caught the indents of the engraved lines and she knew she wasn't just imagining it. Someone had carved this here, who knew how long ago. Who knew how long it had been here, just waiting for her to find it...
Feeling ill, Charla pulled her paw back but did not tear her eyes from the carving.
Maybe it didn't mean anything... Maybe someone had just felt like drawing a picture of an eclipse above the Well of Souls for no reason at all, and it was all coincidence that she'd had such a similar dream. That was more likely, wasn't it?
She swallowed. The carving blurred and refocused before her eyes, but it didn't change. She wanted to turn away—she wanted to keep looking around the room and see what other things had been carved into the walls—but she couldn't make herself move. Faintly, she thought she heard a voice murmur something inside her head, but she took no notice. The image of the Well and the moons felt like it was burning itself into her eyes and she couldn't look away.
What did it mean?
"It's best not to dwell too long on dreams."
Charla flinched hard, and the world came back to her with an unpleasant jolt. That voice hadn't come from inside her head; it came from right next to her. Someone was right next to her. She whirled around and flared her wings, fire rising in her throat—and came face-to-face with a pair of huge dark eyes, and the little hunched creature they belonged to.
A pangolin. Charla choked and staggered back, her heart thumping madly against her ribcage. The pangolin stared at her, looking almost as startled.
How long had she been there?
Charla opened her mouth to ask, but shock had turned her mute. She gulped a few times.
"I'm so sorry," said the pangolin, holding one thickly-clawed hand to her mouth. The light from the crystallised sap made her platelike scales look almost golden. "I didn't mean to scare you. I thought you heard me approach."
"I...I didn't," Charla said weakly.
There was an awkward pause, until the pangolin smiled and relaxed her hands. She seemed familiar somehow—and, seconds later, Charla realised why. It was Sister Pema, the one who had found them last night. She remembered her eyes and the sound of her voice.
"Charla, isn't it?" Pema asked, and Charla nodded shyly.
Words seemed to have become stuck in her throat. Vaguely, as if they didn't really matter anymore, she thought of all the questions she'd wanted to ask when she finally found a pangolin, but failed to grasp any of them. Not that she had a chance to speak, anyway—Pema continued before she could even think of what to say.
"I didn't expect to see you here, especially so early." She tilted her head. "Shouldn't you be asleep with your friends? How did you end up here?"
"I..." Charla gulped wordlessly, staring into Pema's dark eyes, her head ringing. "I was just...looking around. I couldn't sleep, and I wanted to talk to someone before you all went to bed..."
She shivered as she spoke, and her eyes kept creeping back towards the carving of the Well, almost of their own accord. It was like a layer of fog had descended over her mind. She felt dizzy.
The lines around Pema's eyes crinkled warmly. "Well, now you have found me. I was just finishing my carving when I heard you come in. Do you want to see it?"
Her carving? Charla swayed on her feet, but then her mind seized on something else and she felt her face burn. "Y-you were here this whole time? I...didn't see you at all. I thought I was alone..."
The back of her neck crawled. Pema had been right beside her for who knew how many minutes, and she hadn't suspected a thing. Nuala's words echoed inside her head, eating at her nerves. If only she'd asked the vulpala to come with her...
"We are used to remaining unnoticed," said Pema with an almost rueful smile. "Sometimes, it is the only way to survive in Whisperglade. Let me show you the carving; I think you'll like it."
She slipped her claws into the sleeves of her robe and started to turn away, and Charla swallowed hard. Shooting one more look back at the carving of the Well of Souls, she forced her leaden paws to move. Ask... She had to ask... But the words would not leave her mouth, and her tongue had turned to stone. She followed in silence.
They did not go far. Pema led her around the curve of the room and then stopped just inside the glow of crystallized sap. She swept her claws towards the wall, as if unveiling something incredible, but all that Charla saw was yet another crude picture carved into the wood.
She squinted and looked closer. There was a path, winding through the forest. Upon it, four carven figures stood in a row, the smallest hovering above the rest. And one of them, Charla saw with a funny shiver, had familiar forward-curling horns...
"That's us, isn't it?" she heard herself whisper.
"It is." Pema sounded like she was smiling. She pointed at a tiny hooded figure standing further along the path, facing the others. "At first, I had only carved myself. I could not be sure if I had interpreted my dreams correctly, and so I did not finish it... But now you are here, my vision has come to pass, and tonight I was able to complete it. I must thank Qilin for allowing me to do so. Not all of us are so lucky."
She clasped her claws together and bowed to the carving itself, and Charla stared. The ringing in her head had started again. The Well of Souls burned in her mind's eye.
"Why, though?" she asked, and she heard her voice shake. "Why do you carve this stuff here? What does it mean?"
"Why, these are the recordings of our visions," said Pema, as if this should have been obvious. "Everything we have ever Seen has been recorded on these walls, carved into the waking world so that we may study them outside of dreams. It's what we have always done."
Everything we have ever seen...
Charla's mouth had gone dry. She tried to swallow, but her tongue was as thick and heavy as wet sand. It was all she could do to choke the words out. "S-so...these are visions? Of the future?"
"Oh, not always of the future. Some of the past, some of the present, some that depict things far more abstract than a mere event placed in time... And many have already come to pass, just like mine." She smiled at her carving again, and Charla surged on while she had the chance.
"But do you know what all of them mean?"
"Oh, certainly not!" Pema giggled. "Of course, there are some that I do—such as those that have already occured—but most of them are a mystery to me. Often, they remain a mystery even to those who Saw them. Such is the way with visions..."
Then, before Charla could so much as open her mouth again, Pema yawned and turned away from the walls. "If you are interested, I will gladly tell you more another time. But perhaps we should retire for the day. The morning is breaking and I must sleep... Are your friends nearby?"
"N...no. They were all sleeping when I left." Charla looked nervously into the darkness around the room. The idea that the sun had probably risen, that her friends might be waking up at this very moment, no longer seemed very important. Her dream, the carving, the Well of Souls... She couldn't leave without knowing what it all meant.
"Then how about I take you back to them?" Pema said, oblivious. "We don't want them to worry about you, and I don't want you to get lost on your way back."
Charla shook her head. Her voice had failed her, but she couldn't go. Not yet.
"No?" Pema sounded surprised. "Are you sure? You are welcome to stay here, of course, but it's very easy to get lost on the monastery if you do not know your way around. And I really must get to sleep."
Charla shook her head again, more forcefully this time, but Pema just looked bewildered. She sighed.
"I'm sorry I cannot stay. If you wish to come with me, you may. Otherwise, I bid you a good day, Daughter of Qilin. I shall let your friends know where you are, just in case..." She trailed off, eyed Charla uncertainly, and then started to shuffle away, the hem of her robes swishing across the floor. The darkness beyond the glowing sap began to swallow her up.
At last, Charla unstuck her tongue.
"W...wait!"
There was a startled silence. Pema looked back at her. "If there is something you need—"
"You can't go yet!"
Her shout echoed in a ghostly wail around the chamber, and Charla flinched. She lowered her voice. "I just... I need to ask you something. It won't take long. Please."
At first there was no response, but then Pema turned and shuffled back, her silver-threaded sleeves sparkling in the muted light. Charla gazed at her, heart in her throat. She felt shaken and scared and she didn't know why.
Pema's dark eyes searched her face, soft with concern. "Something here has frightened you, hasn't it?"
Charla just swallowed. She was being stupid, she knew that. But everything seemed to have happened so quickly, and her head was reeling with the suddenness. It was like they'd been hopelessly lost in the forest one moment, and then here in this unbelievable temple the next—and already she'd run off on her own and gotten lost in this strange place, all because she'd wanted to ask a few silly questions. Now she'd somehow found her way here, to this chamber of weird carvings, to find an image from her own nightmares etched into the wall.
She felt like she was going mad.
"There's...a carving," she said, her voice catching. "Over there. It's…"
"Show me."
Charla curled her tail and whirled around. With Pema gliding solemnly behind her, she retraced her steps. Carvings swam towards her out of the gloom and disappeared just as quickly, and Charla's heart began to pound. It was here somewhere… What if she couldn't find it again? The darkness seemed to press in on her, constricting her.
But then, seconds later, there it was—those gaping mountain jaws beneath the twisted moons. She halted before it, heart in her throat.
"This one," she whispered.
Pema was silent for a long time, enough that Charla's scales began to crawl and her paws started to sweat. Finally, she heard the pangolin sigh.
"I see," she murmured. "Is this familiar to you? Do you know what this is?"
Charla's gut churned and she dug her claws into the soft wooden floor. Golden light pulsed in her eyes. The carving flickered like it was alive. "It's...something I've seen before. In my dreams. I just want to know what it means. Why it's here. Who did it…"
Pema looked at her, her dark eyes turned sepia by the light, and Charla had no idea if she could trust her—who she was, what she was, what this place was. But there was no one else she could ask. She trailed off. Pema brushed her horn with the tips of her claws.
"Strange," she murmured, "that someone like you would dream of this. But...perhaps not entirely surprising. This is a new vision, recently carved, and it is an unusual one. I do not know who carved this here, but I do know that many of my brothers and sisters—and I as well—have shared this dream in recent weeks. We all know of it; we all foresee it. It is, after all, hard not to notice such a stark disruption in the ebb and flow of magic.
"Even you," she continued sharply, before Charla could speak, "a child of Qilin not gifted with clairvoyance, but sensitive to the stream of mana, have sensed it. That is...alarming. But such things are the least we can expect as the Night of Eternal Darkness draws near."
Charla's breath whistled like ice from between her teeth. All of a sudden, she felt very cold. "The...the what?"
Pema hesitated, her claws slipping back into their sleeves. "The Night of Eternal Darkness. The eclipse of the celestial moons. Do you not know of this?"
The chill air shivered in Charla's lungs. She wanted to tear her eyes from the carving but couldn't look away, as if the overlapping moons were a single eye blazing into her soul. She shook her head.
Pema hummed grimly. "And yet you have dreamed of it… You must be very confused."
Charla forced her eyes shut and wrenched her head to the side. "I am! I don't understand it at all! I just...I just want to know what it is! What does it mean? Is it a vision of the future? Is it actually going to happen?"
The thought made her paws quake. Even without knowing what it was or what was happening, seeing the eclipse in her nightmares had terrified her. There was something so wrong about it—and to think that it might be real, that it might actually happen... She almost didn't want to know.
"Not all of our visions come true," Pema murmured. "The art of foresight is not so simple. We See things that are, things that were, things that could be, and sometimes we See things that will never happen at all… But of this vision, we know one thing for certain. The Night of Eternal Darkness has occurred before."
Charla gulped. "It...it has? When?"
"Centuries ago, long before any of us were alive. Now the moons grow restless, and it's only a matter of time before their next great eclipse, when our world will be plunged into darkness…"
"What happens then?"
Charla dared to look up, and found herself locked in Pema's distant stare. The pangolin seemed to gaze straight through her, as if seeing things that only she could see, on a plane that Charla could never hope to glimpse.
"Strange things," she murmured. "The threads of mana become unravelled. The lines between life and death become blurred. The dead walk again. And those who have been touched by tainted magics are drawn to the pinnacle of this darkness, the place where a fool on a throne of blasphemy once twisted mana beyond recognition, to his dark and terrible purpose…"
Pema's far-seeing eyes came to rest again on the carving, but Charla already knew what she was going to say—so she said it for her.
"The Well of Souls."
"Yes." Pema blinked, and the distance seemed to fade from her eyes. She frowned at the mountain and the moons. "That is a place of terrible corruption, the centre of the depravity that consumes our realm. It's where the war began, long ago…and now we fear there is still worse to come from the depths of its darkness. The one you call the Dark Master is not done with us yet."
"The...the Dark Master?" Charla's wings quivered and her heart thumped in her throat. Even now, after everything, she had not forgotten the stories Jayce had once told her. The purple dragon, a beast of immeasurable power, fueled by a hatred of his own kind to start a war that would last centuries beyond his death… A myth, or not? "Does this 'Night of Eternal Darkness' have something to do with him?"
A shudder rolled through Pema's tiny body, and her long curled tail unraveled with a violent flick. She shook herself and turned sharply from the wall. "I'm sorry, I have said too much. I must not tell you any more than this. We do not speak of visions that are not yet certain to occur, and certainly not to guests. It is against our code of honour. I will say no more."
Charla gaped. She flailed a paw towards the carving, almost tripping over her own tongue. "But—but…! You have to tell me! You told me about the Night of Eternal Darkness! Why can't you tell me about the Dark Master?"
"Because we do not know for sure!" Pema whirled on her, and suddenly her soft and downy face looked anything but. It was sharp, angular, fierce. "We know the Eternal Night will come, as it has come before, as we have watched the moons draw closer together. But what comes along with it—the things we have foreseen that may yet happen on that night… We can only guess." She drew a shaky breath and looked away. "And I hope that we are wrong."
Charla swallowed hard. "...Why?"
But Pema shook her head. "I'm sorry, child. I cannot say."
"But…"
"However," said Pema, drawing herself up so that, for a moment, she was almost taller than Charla, "there is one more thing I can tell you."
Charla held her breath. Pema gazed solemnly into her eyes and spoke very clearly.
"I sense that you and your friends are on a great quest. I may not know your purpose or where your destination lies, but I warn you with all the sincerity I have: Stay far away from that place, that Well of Souls, that Mountain of Malefor. Dark things will happen there, as they have happened before, and no fool would dare to walk its halls when the celestial moons eclipse. Guard yourself from it, whatever happens.
"And should you continue to dream of it, I implore you…"—her eyes flickered in the pale light—"think of them only as dreams. You are not a seer. Do not let yourself be drawn in. Do not let it guide you like a moth to a flame. The Night of Eternal Darkness cannot harm you, as long as you do not seek it out."
Then she linked her claws inside her sleeves, sighed deeply, and bowed her head. "Now, please, Child of Qilin, let me take you back to your friends. I cannot tell you anything more."
Charla said nothing. She could hear her own heart beating in her ears, and a chilling frost was steadily crystallising inside her lungs. Stay away from the Well of Souls…? She couldn't do that. That was exactly the one thing she couldn't do. Jayce and Silverback were waiting for her!
And if something terrible really was descending upon the Well of Souls, that was all the more reason to go there! She couldn't just leave them. She had to save them.
But Pema's words ate at her resolve like acid, and fear of the unknown rose like bile in her throat. She wasn't even sure what she was afraid of. This so-called Night of Eternal Darkness? The Dark Master? Some unspoken danger?
"When?" she croaked out, ignoring Pema's request. "When is it going to happen? When is the eclipse?"
Pema sighed and seemed to deflate. "That, I cannot say. We cannot be sure. In a month, perhaps, or even two—or maybe in as little as a few weeks. All we can do is watch the moons. They will tell us, in time…"
Charla clenched her paws to stop them from shaking. A few months, a few weeks... Surely she would make it there by then. They were almost halfway now, and they would be once they got to Lake Qilin. There shouldn't be any reason to worry about this eclipse thing and whatever came with it. They'd be there and gone long before this 'Night of Eternal Darkness' even happened...
Right?
Pema touched her shoulder and she jumped. The pangolin was smiling in that sort of motherly, reassuring way that made Charla feel young and stupid. She blushed and dropped her gaze.
"But there is no need for you to worry about it, I assure you. Dreams cannot hurt you, and we are far from that awful place." Her blunt claws gave Charla's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Now, let us go back to your friends. We don't want them to worry about you too much."
Her voice was soft but firm, and Charla knew there would be no more arguing with her. So, at last, she pulled her eyes from the carving, nodded mutely, and turned to follow Pema back across the dark chamber. Only then, as she raised a paw to walk away, did she think of something else. An ice-cold grip clenched around her stomach.
"H-hey," she called into the darkness. "Can I ask something else?"
Pema stopped near the middle of the chamber, where it was so dark that she was invisible except for the faintest hint of light on the edges of her robes. "One more quick question, then."
Charla hesitated, her claws digging into the floor. "Do—do you know anything about my future?"
There was a pause. A sigh whispered through the blackness.
"The question everyone wants to ask..."
For a long few seconds, that was all she said.
Charla wavered. "Do you, though?"
There was a quiet swish of robes and Pema's form moved in the dark. "I do not know. If there is anything, it will be recorded on these walls. But I do not know of all the dreams and visions Seen by my fellow monks."
"So...you haven't seen anything?"
Another pause. Charla heart was still beating loudly in her ears.
"If I had," said Pema, "I would not tell you. Come. We've delayed long enough."
Then she walked away without another word, leaving nothing behind but the sound of her robes gliding steadily across the floor.
Charla lingered for a moment longer, alone in the dark, with only the faded glow of crystallized sap to give her light. That glow did not feel warm and comforting anymore. It was weak and cold, struggling to exist in the darkness. And this place frightened her. It seemed to whisper things to her—things she did and didn't want to hear, things she wasn't meant to know—and she didn't want to be there any longer.
One last time, she looked back at the carving of the Well of Souls and the eclipsing moons above its peak, and finally tore herself away.
Then she fled across the empty chamber, across the black void, where there were monsters biting at her heels, demons hiding in her shadow, creatures snatching at her tail—and she felt for the first time, as if the eclipse were already upon her, that no fire in the world was enough to hold back this darkness.