"Monster"
"You
say it called you Eliwan? Could you have been mistaken?" Delia’s brows were
furrowed in consternation. Shimmer nodded respectfully, but secretly she was
becoming tired of answering the scholars?endlessly repeated questions.
Nimbulo
finally stirred in his seat. Shimmer had begun to suspect he had fallen asleep
with his eyes open, so long had he remained motionless. He leaned forward,
draping his long arms across the polished starwood table.
"I think we have
learned all that the adept can tell us." He addressed the assemblage of
Arderian Scholars, subtly scolding them in his usual manner. The Elder magi
turned to face Shimmer and Kalius. "Too, I believe that all of us here know
exactly what it is we are faced with, even though we could never have expected
this to come to pass."
"Um?i>I
don’t know what we’re facin? Somebody mind tellin?me what’s goin?on?"
Shimmer turned to place a restraining hand upon the young scout’s arm.
"Now just a
minute Nimbulo," blurted Lasada, blatantly ignoring Kalius?questions. "We all
must surely know what the situation looks like, but let’s not jump to
any hasty conclusions!"
"And you would
rather sit idly and debate about it for another day or so? How about a week? A
month, perhaps?" Nimbulo’s patience had reached the breaking point. Shimmer was
all too aware of the terrible tempers the Arderian Elder was capable of. She
hoped he could restrain himself a little longer—the last thing needed now was a
battle of wills. They needed action.
"Don’t be
ridiculous, Nimbulo! You can’t seriously expect us all to believe that an
ancient enemy, almost a myth, has suddenly reappeared in our midst after
what…more than three thousand years?" Lasada turned to confront the other
scholars. "Well, I cannot speak for the rest of you…but I stopped believing in
bedtime stories long ago, and I’m not intending to start believing them now!
No! There has to be another explanation!" Lasada turned and floated up and out of
the great hall through the upper balconies.
"Hmmph" was all
Nimbulo said.
"I agree with
Lasada, in sentiment if not in his ill manners." Nimbulo turned to glare
accusingly at her, bushy eyebrows raised challengingly. Delia hastened to add,
"Now, now. All I am saying is that we should do what we can to glean additional
information." Turning to Shimmer, she asked, "Are the Healers with the creature
at this time?"
Shimmer nodded
again, trying to remain respectful while also keeping an eye on Kalius, who was
fidgeting irritably beside her. "They
will do what they can, I am sure, Scholar." Delia turned back to the gathered
Scholars. "If this thing truly can speak, then we must speak with it as soon as
it is able. Meanwhile, I suggest we send a team out the the North Cloud Forest
to inspect the site of its appearance. Perhaps there are clues left behind
which Shimmer and Kalius failed to notice."
"Now just a
minute?" began Kalius. Shimmer dug her nails into his arm, willing him to be
silent.
"No disrespect
intended, young scout." Delia added, sparing a brief nod in his direction. "We
shall ask Kalius to guide us to the spot so that we may have a look around."
Now the elder woman looked at Shimmer. "And I should like to see this
"creature" with my own eyes, Adept."
"As would I,"
growled Nimbulo. Delia nodded curtly in reply, her eyes remaining upon Shimmer.
"Let us go at
once, then." She rose from her chair, her stately robes falling gracefully to
the floor, fluttering slightly as she stretched her wings.
"But?i>what
are you all talking about?" Kalius was beyond restraint now. The mood of the
Scholars had frightened him, and he would not be calmed until he knew the
truth.
Delia nodded to
the scout. "You have a right to know, although if you had paid heed to your
lessons, young man, I should think you would already know what we are talking
about! You are an Arderian, after all—not one of those uneducated groundlings
mucking about below!"
Kalius?face
began to burn with shame at the scolding. He visibly restrained himself as he
muttered, "Yes, ma’am."
Delia lifted her
chin, glaring down her long nose at the young Arderian and added, "Very well.
When you return from leading the expedition into the Cloud Forest, we shall
convene with the members of the Arderian Guard—apparently the least educated of
our people—as well as Jaela and her councilors to have a little refresher
course in Moonland history."
Kalius kept his
eyes to the floor, but Shimmer noted the furious blush in his cheeks, his jaws
tightly clenched in anger. To his credit, though, he kept his thoughts to
himself and replied instead, "That’ll do. Now, who’s goin?to the forest with
me?"
v
Delia stood with
Shimmer and Nimbulo, gazing down upon the unconscious creature. Its damaged
tentacles had been carefully wrapped in fluffy cloud-gauze, and shone dimly
with the light of a lingering healing spell. The burns upon its torso had been
washed and spread with soothing balms and oils, giving it an unpleasantly slimy
appearance.
Delia looked
upon the beast with unveiled horror. She turned to Nimbulo, even paler than
usual, "You have the book?"
With a solemn
nod, Nimbulo withdrew an ancient text from within his robes. Silently he opened
it. The pages were tattered and yellowed with age, far too brittle to be handled
by anything so clumsy as fingers. Nimbulo held the open book before his face
and gently exhaled a short spell. The pages began to turn in the gentle breeze
from his lips, until they reached the proper page. He then laid the book upon a
floating patch of cloud vapor and stood back for the others to see the pages.
Shimmer gasped
as she beheld the ancient illustration depicted upon the brittle paper. There,
illustrated in the highly stylized manner of the ancients, was a being which
undeniably resembled their new guest. Consisting mostly of a single great eye,
with a cluster of tentacles dangling below, the beast bore an unmistakable look
of hostility. Upraised in its large flipper hands, it held a vicious-looking
staff, with a scythe-like blade arcing from one side at the top. Below the
baleful eye of the beast, its tentacles were bright with sparkling yellow
energy, holding it several feet above the ground below. Worst of all, beneath
its hovering tentacles, was heaped a pile of several bloodied and bruised
people; either unconscious or dead, Shimmer was unsure of which. Either way,
the implications were chilling.
"And these are
the ancient enemy?" Shimmer asked, looking to Nimbulo—undoubtedly the most
knowledgeable of all the Scholars of Arderial.
The elder magi
nodded, his face carved into a stony frown. "Yes, young adept. These are the
vile monsters which destroyed the civilization of our ancestors, which forced
them to flee to the Moon."
"And wasn’t
there some sort of shield or wall put up to keep them from getting to the
Moon?" Shimmer knew that her peoples?knowledge of such ancient matters was
very limited, but if the information were recorded anywhere in the Moonlands,
it would have been in the great Hall of Scholars in lofty Arderial. Knowledge
was prized above all else among the aerial citizens of the sky region.
"Yes, that’s
right. Although it doesn’t seem to have been a physical or even a truly magical
barrier—at least not in the way we think of such things." Shimmer raised her
eyebrows in interest, nodding for the elder to continue. "Well, the histories
seem to indicate that the ancestors traveled from world to world by somehow
using the Dream Plane to travel swiftly from one place to another. That is
where they encountered these terrible monsters in the first place. After the
monsters were discovered, they began to destroy the worlds the Eliwan had
settled one by one."
"Wait—you mean
there were more worlds than just the homeworld?" Shimmer questioned in awe.
Nimbulo tilted
his head in agreement. "Hard to believe, isn’t it? The histories briefly refer
to the existence of at least seven other worlds, connected to El by some
strange manipulation of the Dream Plane." Nimbulo’s voice became more
impassioned as he recounted the wonders of the ancient world. "There must have
been millions and millions of the ancestors to populate so many new worlds.
Just think of the wonders they must have seen!"
Shimmer’s mind
reeled in awe, her imagination filling with grand images of glories past. Delia
disturbed her reverie by prompting Nimbulo, "But this shield…how did they do
it?"
"Apparently they
discovered some way to make travel through the Dream Plane impossible, at least
locally. Although the histories are terribly vague on the topic, my guess is
that they made a sort of "bubble" in the Dream Plane, cutting the moon off from
its connection to the rest of the Dream Plane."
"Magic of that
magnitude must surely have been impossible—even for the ancients!" Delia
scoffed in disbelief. Shimmer shook her head in wonder. All those grand
accomplishments—all lost to the descendants of the Eliwan.
Nimbulo shook
his head. "Not impossible, Delia. How else can you account for the fact that
the monsters never followed our people to the moon?"
Delia shook her
head in exasperation. "Alright, alright. Let’s say for argument’s sake that you
are correct in your ‘guess’—so how did this monster," she gestured to the
unconscious form on the bed, "manage to get past this Dream Plane barrier?"
"I don’t know,"
was the somber reply.
"You…you don’t
know? The great and mighty Nimbulo doesn’t know? Ooh-hoo-hoo!" crowed
Delia. She turned to Shimmer and added, "I never believed we would see the day
when this old bird would admit he didn’t know everything!"
Shimmer noticed
the creature shifting slightly in its resting place. She placed a finger to her
lips and said, "Shhh. We should not wake it up. The healers placed a sleeping
spell upon it, but no one knows how effective the magic will be on a being such
as this."
Delia looked
back to the "monster" sleeping nearby. Her momentary mocking glee faded to be
replaced with heavy concern once more. She nodded silently, then turned and
left the room. Nimbulo, carefully closed the ancient tome and concealed it
within his robes once more. He then placed a heavy hand on Shimmer’s shoulder.
"The greatest danger lies in what we do not know."
Then he, too, was gone, leaving the adept alone with the strange creature. She
turned her gaze back to her unwelcome guest, studying its alien features and
wondering what secrets it might possess.
What happens next? Read Part 5 "A Walk in the Clouds" |
Magi-Nation and all properties shown on this page is © Interactive Imaginations 2000 - 2010. All Rights Reserved.
All artwork on this site are copyright their respective owners.