Chapter 11: Crimson rain

She vanished from view and left us alone with my shoulder burning in pain. I had seen enough blood in my life recently to recognize the color of the life giving liquid and not be sickened by it. But still, it had not been my own until now and the burning sensation in my shoulder intensified as Eric pressed the palms of his hands against the deep wound. He proceeded to stop the bleeding using his shirt which slowly began staining red as a result of the blood soaking into the fabric. The pain was intense enough to cause tears to well up in my eyes as I shut them tightly. His hands stained with my blood, Eric looked around for items and tools to use as a gurney in order to bring me back to the surface. It wasn't long before he fashioned a carrier out of rope, two boards and a bed sheet and hauled me back up the tunnel.

He took me into the house to get the wound sewed back up. He called to Rose as he burst through the front door, "Rose, get some iodine and something to stitch together a wound." Rose came to see what all of the commotion was about only to see me holding onto my shoulder in pain and seeing that the makeshift tourniquet soaked in crimson blood. "Oh my gosh! What happened?" She gasped before dashing around to fetch a rag and the iodine. "I'll tell you later. We have to get her sewn up." Eric began raising his voice with worry. They began mending my wound as the pain intensified during sterilization and even when Rose pierced the hot needle through my skin to sew it up. My screams of pain rang through the forest loud enough I was nearly afraid of alerting Igthorn to our location.

It was over in an instant. Even though the pain lingered, the procedure was over before I even knew it. Eric then picked me up and carried me over to my room to allow me rest and let the wound heal. "You didn't need to do that for me, you know." He solemnly said to me while hovering himself above my face. "Like I said to Luna, 'I'm not gonna lose another loved one." I weakly said to him. He knelt down and kissed be before saying, "If only I was a gummi bear." All I could do was smile at the notion before I fell asleep from weakness. Eric then made his way back toward Rose to relax himself. "You know you can't keep her, right? Once she has the time stone back, she needs to return to her own time without you." It was the hard truth, but she felt that he needed to hear it. "You are going to have to help repair the quick tunnels. And from now in one of us needs to stay behind and guard Sunni." Eric demanded ignoring Rose's advice. "What are you talking about?" Rose asked slightly confused and insulted that she was ignored. Eric then began recounting the incident. Rose listened intently to the story and realized in her own mind what had been going on. "He must have been at this secretly ever since we acquired her." She said more to herself than to Eric. "But, isn't cloning technology illegal?" Eric asked with concern. "Yes, it is. Ever since Igthorn used it to create an army of himself to destroy Mousehiger and one of them went rogue and killed his love, Lady Bane." Rose answered. "You worked for Igthorn, did they ever actually eliminate all of the clones?" Eric asked adding on to his earlier statements. "Igthorn killed them all himself. Clones are instinctively drawn to their originals, effectively acting like a homing beacon. So, it makes sense for Dr. Lavender to use a clone to retrieve Sunni and how this 'Luna' found her so fast." Rose answered in a way that sounded like she was making an educated study of them. Eric backed away from the woman slightly scared and mildly informed. "I'm hungry, he said and then moved in to the kitchen to see if the ducks were finished cooking. Mildly insulted, Rose simply huffed and crossed her arms in frustration.

While unconscious, I dreamed of my old life in the glen. I was posing for Gusto's new sculpture and he finally came up with the idea of sketching a blueprint on paper rather than chiseling the sculpture with me standing in front of him forever. After six perspective views of the pose he had come up with, I stepped down from my perch and reviewed his drawings with him. Suddenly, as I viewed his drawings, the paper mysteriously began to burn away, and Gusto barely noticed it even happening. The flames spread from the paper and onto his paw, burning away at his fur and flesh. Still not even showing any signs of pain. When I tried to warn him of the flames, no sound exited my mouth and Gusto simply tried to ask what I had said to him. It was far too late now to warn him of any impending doom, the flames spread and engulfed him completely, leaving a charred skeleton in its place. The skeleton glanced at me and began moving its lower jaw to speak, "Sunni. Come back. We need you." The moment the words had finished exiting his mouth, the skeleton then fell to dust at my feet and the weather turned dark. In a few moments, it had begun to rain, not water drops, but drops of blood that stained my fur as it fell. The blood rain continued to pour down harder and harder and I ran back toward the glen to keep from having my fur turned deep red. The strange thing was, the moment I reached the entrance, the ground gave out from under me and I fell for around six feet and landed in the courtyard of Drekmore, surrounded by Ogres. The Ogres began laughing at me and continued to laugh until the Igthorn I recognized from my era stepped through the crowd of Ogres and silenced them in order to speak to me. "Welcome to Drekmore, my crimson little friend." He greeted me. I stood in a defensive pose, ready to defend myself if need be. "I must thank you for helping me with the discovery and location of the Time Stone, Mrs. Lohengrin." I tried to say that he could "go rot in a hole" for all I cared, but the words that I said were, "It's a pleasure to serve you Duke Igthorn. Now about my payment?" Igthorn simply smiled and motioned to the Ogres. Two of them then took me by the paws and began hauling me into the castle. After a short jaunt into the castle, they proceeded to toss me into a dungeon. However, the moment they released me and gave me a toss, I shot awake with a fright. I screamed aloud from the nightmare and Eric ran into the room as fast as he could. "Sunni? What happened? Was it Luna?" He asked defensively. I calmed myself down a bit before flopping back down onto the pillow and shaking my head to answer his question. Still tired from all of my screaming and loss of blood, I fell back into a deep sleep before anyone could ask any more questions.

I found myself still in my room when I awoke three hours later, with my head still spinning and with Eric sleeping in a chair in the far right side of the room. It seemed like the opportune moment for a snappy comment, "If things like this keep happening, we'll never get the tunnels finished." I muttered in a groggy voice. His head shot up the moment the word, "never" escaped my lips. "Sunny! You're awake. How are you feeling?" The words spilled out of his mouth as if he had been waiting for me to awaken for days. "I made an attempt to move a little but my strength failed me and my shoulder began to burn once more. Just as I flopped back down to the pillow, my stomach grumbled loudly. Eric had placed his hand on my good shoulder in order to encourage me to lie still when the grumbling noise caught his attention. We both began to laugh and he finally stood up and said to me, "I'll go and get you some soup that Rose cooked up. You just lie back and watch some TV." Slightly confused I perked up my right eyebrow and asked, "T... V?" Eric stopped to answer my question the best he could, "It's a device that broadcasts a picture from somewhere else." He soon gave up and showed me a mysterious box with a glass screen in the front of it. He then picked up a small flat device with a variety of buttons on it and pushed one of them. Suddenly the glass screen lit up and there was a moving picture on the inside of the box. Humans wearing vintage western outfits were shooting at each other and riding on horses. A bugle could be heard in the background and strangely more music accompanied the scene. At first I was quite startled until Eric brushed the concept off as normality and simply said, "There we go, an old western movie. Think of it as watching the contents of a movie play out in front of your eyes." And with that, he left the room briefly to fetch the soup.

Eric was right. It really was like watching a story book come to life temporarily. I was mesmerized by the pictures moving and telling the story as if it happened in real life at that very moment. The movie had action, suspense, and even romance rolled up in it. I was thoroughly intrigued by it.

Five minutes later, Eric came back in with a warm bowl of soup in his hands. He knelt down and turned a small knob on the "TV" and the sound grew quieter and quieter until it was barely audible. He then placed the bowl down beside the TV, and came over to lift me up enough to rest my back against the headboard of the bed. He then fetched the bowl, sat himself down beside me and proceeded to gently feed me the soup just like he did when we first met.