Rigor Mortis

Chapter Twelve: Lunassah

It had been nearly a month but we were finally approaching the village of Meridian. Luckily, we were given horses and enough supplies to last there and the trip back so we weren't too uncomfortable. We didn't make any stops except to rest at an inn, if we could, though I wanted to see the Pillars as we neared them. Even far away, I was awed at the sheer size and magnitude of the structures and I imagined I could feel a deep, magical pull emanating from them. Moebius decided that we would visit them when we returned home and I was satisfied. I didn't want us to lose track of the Druid simply because I wanted to linger. As my solemn brown horse plodded on through misty moors that gave way to drier arid land, I began to wonder what sort of girl this Druid was. Would she be as nervous and timid as I had been, reviling her powers? Or would she be quick and cunning and horrifically jaded as my friend?

"What are we going to do once we find her?" I asked Moebius finally. He reigned his horse in closer to me and smiled.

"I really don't know," he replied serenely.

"Then why were you so eager to go find her if you didn't have a plan?" I demanded.

"So we could get to her before the vampires," he explained, "We need to get her to realize the human race's predicament before she gets brainwashed with vampiric lies."

"You really are determined to eradicate them, aren't you?" I asked.

"Aren't you?" he sighed. "No, of course not. You haven't exactly experienced their unique brand of tyranny firsthand, have you? That will change, believe me."

We rode on in silence. The air was getting dry and warm and I knew we were far in the deep south of Nosgoth. There was hardly any green to be seen though twisted, gnarled trees struggled to take root in the dusty red soil. I could see no signs of animal life. There weren't any birds flying overhead or any little creatures rustling in the dry scrub brush and I grew more and more concerned. I smelled a peculiar fresh saltiness on the wind to the west and I knew it was the ocean. The sun began to set and as it did, it sent fantastic streaks of crimson and violet against the sky. We would have to find shelter for the night if we didn't find the village of Meridian soon.

"Do you know where Meridian is? Are we close?" I asked. Receiving no reply, I turned in the saddle to look at my friend and I asked him again. Moebius was just staring out blankly at the horizon, seemingly muttering something under his breath. The look on his face was one of stark terror, similar to the expression he wore when he sprang back to life after our trip to Vassurbunde and I shouted his name.

"What is the matter?" I asked, pulling my horse next to him.

"There...there..." he stammered, pointing to the southwest, "It's there!"

"What's there?" I asked him. Still, he stared and pointed. "Moebius! Can you hear me? What's wrong?" I demanded.

"The two flank the third node in the triangle..." he said nonsensically, then he began to scream, "It is where it will all end and begin and end again...Chronoplast! It's there! OZ! OZ! OZ! The end comes beyond chaos!" Not knowing what else to do, I hopped off my horse and shook him by the shoulders. He still wouldn't respond so I pulled him out of his saddle. He hit the ground with a thump but he seemed to regain control of himself.

"I'm sorry. I...don't know what that was all about," he explained, looking up at me from the ground, his face burning with embarassment, "Something...is to the southwest...and it's damned uncomfortable."

"What is 'OZ'?" I asked, helping him to his feet. "I saw it written on your papers when I camped out in your room not too long ago,"

" 'OZ' is..." he stammered, "Well...it's the end of everything."

"The end of the world?" I asked.

"Oh no, nothing near as noisy," he replied, "This is hard to explain to someone else. I don't quite know it myself. It's all very intuitive, time magic is." We climbed back upon our horses and resumed our slow, plodding pace as he tried to describe to me what he could not put into words.

"Imagine that all existence is a big quilt," he said with some difficulty, as he kept staring out to the southwest and losing focus, "Right. Now, time is but a loop, a loose stitch in the universal cloth, and a Streamer may seize upon a chance, a fatal slip...and plunge the fate of planets into chaos. That's OZ,"

"The end of everything..." I pondered. Nothing he said made sense so far. "Why would anyone want to achieve this?"

"I'll remember eventually," he sighed, "Maybe yesterday,"

"You know you just butchered proper language, right?" I asked, exhasperatedly, noticing that he was staring to the southwest again.

Suddenly, his horse let out a mad scream and reared up under him. He was not prepared and he was thrown to the ground. Faster than I had ever seen any horse, it ran shrieking back the way we came. I was halfway ready when I felt my horse panic and bolt. I managed to hang on for a second when it began to buck and I too hit the ground, watching my horse flee after the first.

"That's never a good sign," Moebius said, getting to his feet with a painful wince.

"What do we do now?" I asked after a time, catching my breath.

"We keep on going south," he said. "I know we're close to Meridian. I know it,"

Determinedly, we continued southwards. In the rocky wasteland, all features looked the same and I feared that we were lost, though Moebius seemed to continue onwards as though we weren't. Occasionally he would resume staring out to the southwest, and I would have to shake him in order to snap him out of it. I grew more and more uneasy as night fell. I was too used to having Moebius take charge of everything I didn't like the idea of his incapacitation, however slight. We should have never left the Citadel, I decided. We should have never tried to deceive Janos...this whole journey was ...

"What the hell is that?" Moebius asked, rousing me out of my thoughts. I saw him point to a large tree to the left. When I followed him to go see what was wrong, I realized that it wasn't the fact that it was a tree that was disturbing but the size and type of it. It was nearly fifty feet tall and had a long smooth trunk that swayed gently in the dry breeze. At the very top were huge vibrantly green leaves that were long and flat and fan-like. I knew this to be a palm tree, though I had only seen pictures of it in books. They were supposed to grow in lush, wet jungle environments...not in dusty steppes.

"I think we are very close..." he said, grinning slightly. He wandered off past the tree and I followed. Soon we encountered another oddity. At our feet lay a trail of vivid green grass leading to the wall of the canyon. There was a large hole in the side, about ten feet in height and width and the trail of verdure led into the darkness therein. Cautiously, we crept inside and took a moment to adjust to the inky blackness. Though I could not tell if it was a trick of the eyes, I thought I saw a faint glow coming from some distance beyond us.

"Do you see it too?" I asked my friend.

"Yes," he answered in a whisper, as the custom in dark areas dictated. Together we crept towards the ghostly light. It seemed to take an eternity for us to reach the source, but that was the nature of darkness. It blurs the lines between things and obfuscates the truth, whether metaphorical or not. We could not judge the distance we traveled and had no way to tell time in the hidden canyon cave. We might have spent hours groping around in the dark, feeling only the rough stony walls. At last we reached the origin of the odd glow and we came upon a startling sight. The narrow tunnel opened upon a wide stone chamber. All around the walls were crystalline outcroppings sticking out at random points and giving off faint multicolored lights In the center of the chamber was an elliptical pool of water and surrounding the circumference were a hundred tiny dancing flames, all seeming to flicker and flit about in the air. Admist all this strange wonder, we heard a faint singing and we hid behind a large stalagmite to listen under cover. Peering out curiously, I spotted something moving about in the water and made out the form of a young girl swimming. I blushed furiously, because she undoubtedly wasn't wearing any clothes. Moebius, unconcerned about this situation, stood up and announced himself.

"Excuse me, miss?" I heard my friend ask. "I apologize about barging in here uninvited but..."

Quite suddenly, I heard a roar and saw a flash of something mountainous and furry slam itself into my friend. An immense bear was standing over Moebius, growling and snarling, its fang-filled face an inch away from his. After a moment of utter terror I realized that the bear was not mauling him. It was merely pinning him to the ground and would growl whenever he'd move too much.

"Mortanius..." Moebius called out in a hushed, but terrified voice, "Do something,"

"You're the mighty vampire-slayer!" I replied, unable to move.

"Bears are quite a bit different than vampires..." he hissed.

"I wouldn't try to get away, Sir," a girl's voice called out. "She's liable to chew your face clean off,"

"I wouldn't dream of getting away," Moebius assured in a quavering voice. The bear grunted and began to snuffle through his hair, never taking its eyes off of him for a second.

I looked towards the subterranean pool and saw the young girl peering out at me from the closest edge. Though I could only see her face from the nose up, I could tell that she couldn't be older than ten. She had wide green eyes that didn't miss a thing and she had a mop of strawberry-blonde hair. She looked like a solemn little otter as she stared at me from the pool and I knew, somewhere deep inside, that we had found the Guardian of Nature.

"Er...hello," I said nervously, for I didn't know if there were any more bears lurking about, "I'm very sorry about all this."

"S'okay," she replied. "Did my father send you? I don't recognize you,"

"I'm afraid not," I answered. I felt uneasy, seeing as I never had much experience with speaking to children. "We came from far up north. Um...My name is Mortanius. What's yours?"

"Lunassah," she said. I saw her bring her hands together and watched as a small jet of water spurted out from between them. "Look, I made a frog!"

"I have never seen that before!" I exclaimed, hoping that I didn't sound too forced. "Well, do you think you could get your bear to let my friend stand? We've come a long way, you see."

"I'm gonna get dressed first," she announced, "You've gotta turn around too."

I obliged and heard the splash as she emerged. Soon she told me she was ready. I saw that she was dressed in a simple brown tunic and sandals that made her look like a little forest imp. She began to braid her hair into two separate tails and smiled at me.

"Hey! Bear! You gotta let him up now!" she yelled. The bear growled once again, but amazingly, relented and shuffled off a ways. Shaking, Moebius swayed to his feet.

"See?" Lunassah frowned, shaking her finger at him, "That's what you get for peeping!"

"I wasn't. Why would I do that? You're much too young," Moebius explained, trying to wipe the drool out of his hair.

"So if I was your age, you'd go ahead and look?" she asked furiously. "That's no better! Hey, bear, go and chew on him!"

"That's not what I said!" he cried as he saw the bear lumbering towards him.

"Lunassah, please!" I begged, "Moebius is a good person. He was only trying to talk to you!"

"Are you sure?" she questioned, "I don't think he is. None of the people from the spooky castle are nice. None of them."

"He's not from the spooky castle and neither am I," I quickly explained, "We're from the Citadel up north. We were sent here to speak to you by the vampire Janos Audron,"

"The crow-man!" she cried gleefully, "Is he coming back to see me like he promised? He gave me a sweet, you know. The bear and I shared it."

"Well, he couldn't come back so he sent us," I explained, "He said that he'd like you to come and see him at his home in the snow,"

"Really? I've never seen snow! I wanna come see him!" she cried and jumped up and down excitedly. "Oh...but my dad wouldn't let me go. He and I have too much to do here."

"That's why we're here! To convince him to let you come with us!" Moebius cried. I turned and saw him once again under the bear, though this time he was being assaulted by a giant pink tongue.

"Ooookay," she said, "Bear, get off of him. Let's go back to my house, Morty. I wanna introduce you to my dad. Are you hungry?" I couldn't help but smile as she unabashedly took my hand in hers and led me out of the cave.