Thank you to those reading this. I do not own sonic the hedgehog or any of the characters from the games, movies or comics but I do own this story and the other characters, I hope you enjoy it.

Things Only Whispered In The Shadows

Ch.3 Sunrise

I wasn't sure what we were doing, other than the obvious. Maxis had gathered us outside shortly before sundown and even though Maxis was with us I couldn't help but feel that we were braking a well-defined and well-founded rule.

Never go out after dark.

We had never broken this rule for the simple fact that we knew what kind of monsters came out at night. Maxis had saved our butts the night we arrived from one such monster and to learn that it was nowhere close to the strongest thing living in these mountains and the valley below gave us a good reason to follow said rule even if we neglected most of the others.

The old fox cleared his throat to get our attention. "I assume you're all wondering why we're out here so close to dark."

"No, not really just wondering what that strange smell is, ah yes a rhetorical question." Even though he was a bot sarcasm seemed to be Fel's second language, his first being code.

Talon raises an eyebrow to Fel, they may be best friends but Talon was a bit more respectful and less sarcastic, for the most part anyway.

"What?" Fel couldn't help but smile, he seemed to have that problem a lot, and we couldn't help but smile back. Talon shook his head trying to hide his smile and I stifled a giggle.

"Are you done?" Maxis was less than amused by our lack of composure. "If you're ready to goof off then I guess you don't need to know what I had to say before you go off for the night on your own..." Wait what?! Suddenly what he had to say seemed infinitely more important.

"Wait... are you serious?" Talon choked on his own sentence.

"You're kidding right?" Talon and Fel were just as surprised.

"No Fel, we're going to go back in to have a banquet in your honor." Maxis always sounded dead serious and to hear that last sentence in his usual tone was almost comical, if the previous one hadn't been so terrifying.

"I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or not, but seen as how you would never throw me a banquet and are now glaring at me like... I should shut up now shouldn't I..." I almost burst out laughing, if it weren't for the look on the old grey foxes face I would be.

He was silent for a minute, probably making sure we were really paying attention, that or he was just doing it to make us even more nervous, if so it was working. "The three of you have reached the point in your training where you will no longer gain anything from training with the bots and you are now experienced enough to survive outside at night, as long as you stick together that is." I could see the seriousness on Maxis' face, the determination on Talons, and the effort to hold back an inappropriate remark on Fel's. I personally was torn between mind numbing anxiety and unparalleled excitement. If Maxis thought we could make if one night together then we really had gotten stronger in the year we spent here. I wasn't sure if I wanted to celebrate or puke, or both. "You will have to use everything you have learned thus far and use it to your utmost limits to survive the night." Good feeling gone I was now trying my best to listen without losing my diner. "Should you get separated heading back to the temple would be your best chance of survival. I will be waiting at the bottom of the steps where we first met in the morning. Until then good luck." He left us there at the bottom of the mountain with one way back, and a bag each to help us carry any necessary gear. Which was mysteriously absent...

"What just happened?" Fel looked almost lost and definitely confused.

"I believe he just left us at the bottom of the mountain at night to fend for ourselves." Once again Talons innate talent had a way of making our blatantly obvious situation sound even worse than if he hadn't said anything at all. A chill went through me as the wind swept past us, rustling the leaves and sapping any enthusiasm we may have had left.

"With no gear and a pile of empty bags." I couldn't help myself at this point.

"We need to find somewhere to hold up, somewhere we can defend." Fel switched over to the only agreeable side of his personality, he was a tactician and survivalist when he wanted to be, operative words being 'wanted to'. "If we can't find somewhere then we need to find food and then keep moving and hope we can keep up whatever pace we need to too survive."

"We just ate, shouldn't we wait a bit to find food?" I wasn't sure why he wanted us to find food if we didn't need it at the moment.

"No Fel's right, if we look for food now then we won't have much competition since everything is either going to sleep or just waking up." That made sense I guess, I glanced around at the forest in the quickly fading light of dusk. This place was intimidating during the day and downright frightening now that the light was fading. "Another reason, if we wait till it gets too dark we might not be able to find much or have time to do so." Another valid reason to get moving now, the longer we stayed here the more I felt like we were being watched. I shivered.

"Come on let's get moving, not like I need food like you two do but the thought of being alone out here is not a comforting one." I had never noticed before but Fel's eyes glowed in the dark, and for some reason I found that funny, even knowing that we could be ambushed any moment.

Talon nodded and lead the way. Fel and I fell in behind him and we made our way through the darkened forest, each hoping for a miracle.

A while later we found a small stream leading away from the temple, but that was fine we needed water and we could clearly see the peaks that hid the temple from anywhere in the valley. "Heh... look guys, I found something." I grabbed the small shard of glass out of the water, holding it up to the moonlight filtering through the trees. It was about the size of my index finger and smooth on all sides, probably from the water, and a pale blue color. Looking back to where I found it I discovered more of the smooth shards. In all I found a yellow one, pink, deep blue, red, black, white, green, orange, and purple. They were beautiful and I was strangely attracted to them. I knew they were probably only glass but they felt warm, almost alive. A sharp sound behind me jolted me out of my musings and I quickly turned to see Talon had stepped on a stick.

"I wonder how they got here? The only buildings were near the temple and for glass to be all the way out here... Are they all the same size too?" I pondered his question for a bit until Fel broke my concentration. I quickly dropped all of the shards into my bag.

"We should get moving, and remember where this place is. I hear something coming from further upstream." and he was right, moments after we left the stream we heard a loud roaring sound, like the trees were being ground up, and we didn't dare look back.

When we finally stopped running Fel was the only one who wasn't out of breath, probably because he didn't have to breathe. Sometimes I forget he's a bot. "What the HELL was that?!" We tried to calm him down only to work ourselves up and make even more noise. We had only been outside for about two hours and that made six more to go, we were doing well so far and hadn't encountered anything that we didn't normally see during the day, other than whatever it was that we had narrowly avoided. If we kept quiet we might have gone another couple of hours without incident...

With a resounding crash one of the six legged monsters we had met on our first night in the mountains reared its ugly head over the trees and charged in our direction. Thankfully it was louder than we were and had given us enough of a warning to get out of the way just in time to avoid the flying trees along with its gnashing teeth. It was also a good thing that the plants in this place grew so quickly or there wouldn't be a forest to begin with, too many monsters rampaged on a regular basis.

Unfortunately for us we all scattered in different directions.

This one was almost double the size of the one on the mountain had been and was undoubtedly stronger, and with the three of us separated in the dense foliage there was no way to tell where each one of us had landed. I decided to hit it hard and fast like the first one but this time I knew where to aim.

"Fel! Whisper! You two alright?" Talons voice came from the opposite side of the thing and Fel's reply came from behind, how in the world he had gotten there I could only guess.

Instead of replying I jumped onto its back and ran up its neck. Crouching low I dodged one of its tails and lunged at its head. I didn't use the Silver Sleeve, I wanted to know how much damage that I could do without it. My aim was perfect and it let out a painful cry as I made contact with the base of its skull. There was the sound of cracking bone as it fell to the ground. I stood on top of its massive body just below the canopy of trees, "So who's next?" Fel stood there with his mouth hanging open and Talon grinned like he had just seen a miracle happen before his eyes. "That wasn't near as hard as I thought it would be..." All of a sudden it lurched upright again, flailing its head and twin tails towards us. I lost my balance and tumbled to the forest floor below, catching myself before I landed on my face.

It was Fels turn to take a shot at the beast, by the way the thing was flailing I was certain it was having trouble seeing us and by the sounds it was making I was fairly certain it was in pain. I almost felt sorry for it, until Talon came to check to see if I was alright and I remembered that it had tried to eat us a minute ago.

We looked up at it to see Fel pounding it from every angle, and without missing a beat he landed the finishing blow on the exact spot I had hit. He jumped off and landed a ways in front of us, practically posing for a super hero comic. "So how was that now? I think we should be alright now that I finished the beast off." He puffed his chest out and strutted over. I giggled at the image of a peacock that I found popping up in my head and Talon rolled his eyes.

"Come on captain robocat we still have most of the night ahead of us and the racket we just caused is sure to attract unwanted attention from something nastier." Talon lead us safely away from the corpse and as we rounded a large boulder at the base of another cliff I saw pebbles skittering down from above. Remembering the rock slide that broke Talons leg I reacted without hesitation. In less than a second we were behind the boulder and the rumbling was behind us. I hadn't thought of how I was going to get them both back behind the boulder in time, it just happened. Looking from Talon to Fel and back they were equally impressed with what had just occurred. "Forget the monsters for a moment, what was that?"

"I... I don't know..." I glanced at myself wondering the same thing "It just... Happened"

"Well however it just happened let's hope it doesn't get us into trouble." Fel was usually not such a pessimist but I really couldn't blame him for being wary of something none of us understood in the least.

Once clear of the landslide we continued on to a hopefully quieter place to pass the night. By the time midnight rolled around we had found yet another cave and even though we were reluctant to enter we did, only out of a sense of urgency to find shelter. "If that thing finds us we're as good as dead..."

I had never seen Fel so shaken up, and worst of all was he wouldn't tell us what was after us. Fel had been the only one to see whatever it was and that had been nearly an hour ago, now we were searching every cave we could find for a good place to hide.

Talon had tried his best to get a coherent answer out of him but all we got was an even more cryptic answer. We knew that if we could make it to daybreak then anything foolish enough to follow us up the mountain would have to deal with the old fox. Until then we were on our own.

"This cave looks pretty deep, should we even be in here?" something crunched under my foot as I walked forward to get a better look. "Uhhhh... Guys I think we should get out of here like, NOW" I had stepped on a bone and it wasn't the only one. At first glance in the dark the cave floor just looked a little uneven which wasn't unusual for a cave but looking closer, the floor wasn't uneven it was littered with bones both big and small. I began backing up quickly towards the exit when something with large, glowing yellow eyes emerged from the darkness of the cave with a slithering, rattling sound.

"Oh crap..." Talon once again grabbed Fel by the arm yanking him out of the way as the enormous thing opened its mouth and sprang forward. This was the third cave we had found something living in and the other four were too small or too obvious to hide in. We didn't get far when something from outside began to snap the nearby trees as it approached. I turned back to look just as the monster behind us got close enough to the exit to be seen clearly, it was a snake almost as big around as the cave entrance and it wasn't a small entrance, both Talon and I could stand on Fel's shoulders and still only graze the top with outstretched hands. If that wasn't enough it looked as if it were covered in bones, big ones, probably the ribs from its victims. And finally to top it all off the thing that had Fel freaking out had found us trapped between the bone snake and itself.

"I told you it was after us!" Fel was nearly hysterical and still being dragged along by Talon. "We are so screwed."

"Snap out of it Fel! We need you to focus on getting out of this alive if you don't mind." Talon shook him as we stopped just out of reach of the snake and got a good look at what was following us. It looked like a creature straight out of someone's nightmares. It stood almost twenty feet tall and stood on two hideously disfigured legs. It was covered in dark grey fur with even darker stripes running along its back, and had blazing red eyes. Its claws were easily as long as my arms and its yellowed fangs were almost as long. I could only look up in terror at the thing. I don't know why it was so intimidating after all we had killed larger monsters during the day, but for some reason it almost looked intelligent.

The snake lunged at us again and we took that as out cue to leave, running along the base of the cliff we risked another rock slide but it was better than staying between those two.

We edged our way along the cliff, the sounds of a massive battle ringing our behind us. We could hear the blood curdling howls and bone rattling hiss off in the distance for a while. The battle was surprisingly short lived and although I had only seen it once we knew who the victor had been, the steady crashing of trees behind us only made us even more sure of the outcome. Fel was right, we didn't stand a chance against that thing, but he was also wrong about finding a hiding spot. There wasn't a single place we could hide that it wouldn't find us, we had to keep moving.

We spent most of the night picking our way through the densest parts of the forest hoping that it might help slow the thing down enough that it wouldn't easily catch up to us. If we could make it to morning we would be safe, or at least safer, that much we knew for certain.

We had never seen anything like it during the day and we couldn't figure out how something so fierce had managed to elude our daylight wanderings. After a while we stopped hearing it and headed for the temple, it was almost an hour before sunrise and with how far we had run it would take us a while to get back. Then halfway back we heard it again, the blood curdling howl accompanied by falling trees. We were out of the densest parts of the forest now and there were few enough trees between us and it that it was making incredible time gaining on us. We were all exhausted from the fighting and running, and Talon and I were getting hungry.

I decided to push my abilities to the limit and try to get everyone as close to the temple as fast as possible. "I have an idea..."

"If it's what I think you're thinking then don't, you can't carry that much weight yet and even if you could you wouldn't make it very far going that fast." Talon knew me to well sometimes, and he was usually right.

"But what about what happened earlier? With the rock slide"

"What about it? We still don't know how it happened and we only moved behind the boulder we were standing next to. Trying to go from here to the temple would be suicide." Fel had once again sided with my brother and as vexing as it was Fel was usually right as well.

"Well so is not trying. It's catching up to us and it killed that bone snake faster than we ever could have." We continued on in silence for a minute as we picked up the pace.

"Fine we will try to out run it with our speed. You take Fel and get him to the temple and I will make it as far as I can as fast as I can until you get back alright?" I was stunned at first, my brother was admitting I was right, to some extent. If the circumstances had been better I would have smiled and gloated then and there, but they weren't so I would have to lord it over him later.

"Alright, let's do this." The silver and gold sleeves began to shimmer, and we were off. I grabbed Fel and, giving it my all, launched past Talon who with his own limits shattered sped up as well.

Even though he couldn't keep up with me with the silver sleeve he would have easily outpaced me otherwise. It was a bit of a strain on my speed carrying a bot, even one as small and light as Fel, but that didn't stop me from pushing my limits. Three and a half minutes later I nearly collapsed at the bottom of the temple stairs with Fel, half supporting me when I set him down he looked at me with concern evident on his face. I took a minute to catch my breath before turning to head back, I hesitated at the cliff looking down on the scene unfolding below, Talon and the nightmare had made it farther than I thought they would have, it would only take me about a minute to get to Talon, but he didn't have that long before it got to him, if he was lucky he would have less than 30 seconds.

My eyes widened and my mind slowed, as I dropped off of the cliff the only thought in my mind was to go faster, so faster I went using gravity as my ally I felt a warmth spread through me, smothering the cold of the dread and pushing me forward ever faster. The silver sleeve glistened in the breaking of the dawn, casting silver shimmers over my dark purple fur and back over the dark stripes on my quills. I couldn't lose him to. Not after we put all this effort into training. Not after getting this far. Not after losing our parents to Salem... The world around me seemed to slow down as we all neared the bottom of the cliff. Then as the thing pounced I struck it in the chest with a resounding Boom. I felt bone and muscle give way and then bounce violently back, throwing me into a tree. Just as the sun crested the peaks the world began to dim, I could hear my brother whispering something to me but I couldn't hear him he was so quiet. Slowly I relaxed, feeling the tension leave my body as my aching muscles went limp and the already dim world slipped into darkness again.

And that is it for chapter three! Hope you enjoyed it, feedback is welcomed. Thanks.