Sidereal Odyssey, Book 1: Zavijah

Midnight Creatures and Aquaphobia

The sliver of the infinite watched the boys and the freakishly large monster through the eyes of what the boys had named a "Beetle".  It took all of the power that the void yielded to keep the beetle from running away.  The dark figure had been intrigued by the human’s thoughts to record the moonling for future reference, and had spotted him draw a beetle after the array of markings, signifying the name of the creature.  Out of all the conversations it had overheard of them, though, it wondered what a velociraptor was.  

It watched as the otherworldly creature screeched, and could hear it from where it was spectating, miles away.  Flying creatures shook the branches of the trees as they took off in the opposite direction. It sounded like the world imploding on itself, drowning out the boys screeches of fear.  There was no way the duo would be able to take on a creature like this yet, not with their lacking skill in magic, so the void knew it had to intervene somehow, even if it risked early exposure.  How the lord of midnight creatures that overlooked this forest had managed to find them so early in their journey, it didn't know.  But, curious of how the two would react, he would watch until he absolutely had to intervene.

The beetle hid behind the bushes, watching as the human controlled small pieces of earth and rock, flinging them helplessly at the midnight creature with a weak battlecry.  "Forget it!  We have to run, we can't hurt this overgrown mountain!  It will eat both of us and excrete us as pebbles!"  The cat said, struggling to get his belly-bag on.  Zav grabbed the dome gem and scooped his backpack up with one hand as he followed Heze along the glitter-trail, sliding his pack on.  They never ran so fast in their lives, their toes hardly touching the ground in their panicked sprint, dodging past trees and fallen branches.  The footsteps behind them were slow, but seemed to clear a mile with each stride.  

They darted past shining blue moonlings that seemed a blur due to their speed, but once the moonlings saw what they were running from, they sprinted alongside them.  They were large, with dark blue fur that had glowing cyan stripes, and strode on all fours much like Heze and the beetle. Zav recognized their fur from his and Heze's backpacks, and hoped that the moonlings wouldn't notice.  With their size, they had to be a midnight creature, probably a lesser.  There were about eight of them, running alongside the diad, some struggling to keep up and getting lost in the sound of erupting footsteps behind.  This pumped the boys with a hysteria of adrenaline, their legs becoming numb.  Airborne moonlings screeched from above, feathers pale as the moon itself.  Zav couldn't get a close look at them, unable to get their details embedded in his brain for his future recordings, if he survived.

Zav looked back, trying to see their pursuer through the champloo of forest and moonlight.  All he saw were two midnight creatures, which were directly behind him, so close he could hear their panting, and the beetle as the tail end of the fleeing, misfit party.  Heze let out a catlike screech, and Zav turned forward to face him, tall grass whipping at his face.  Only Heze wasn't there, and before Zav had time to register the fact that the blank space ahead of him was a groundless drop-off, he slipped off the edge of the cliff, instinctually pushing off of it as to not hit anything that might be protruding out of the canyon walls.  He looked down to see Heze, limp in the sky, totally passed out from the sight of water at the bottom of the seemingly endless fall.  Zav let out a little laugh at the sight of the cat that was frightened to the point of unconsciousness.  He whipped out a hand to face Heze, mentally attaching the feline to his palm, and yanked him up.  Zav felt himself get pulled down at an accelerated rate, but he knew how to land, while his unconscious friend was sure to break a couple bones in his dreaming state.  Zav looked back up to see if any of the moonlings had followed, and sure enough there was the beetle, twisting and turning in the air helplessly.  Zav reached out a hand and connected to the beetle, pulling himself up and the moonling down.  He felt the palm that connected to Heze give way, letting him know that his friend had plunged into the water.  Zav knew it was his life or the moonlings, so he yanked down as hard as he could, ten yards from the water.  He felt himself fall like a feather, softly landing in the water as Heze surfaced, jolted awake by every felines biggest fear.  

While underwater, Zav heard the nauseating smack of the moonling that had saved his life.  A sharp pain pierced Zav's heart, sorry that he couldn't have saved the beetle, whom he had grown a strange attachment to.

The void was impressed, it hadn't expected the diad to have survived the fall, and was sure the world was destined to end should they have died.  It only wished that they could have survived without destroying his spectating instrument, and it would have to spend the rest of it's power to control another moonling, which would wear it out for the entire day afterwards.  Not that it mattered, the boys had gone so off course that he now had a few days lead on them.  The figure stood and explored the forest that led towards his destination, trying to find any moonling that might be in his path.

"ZAV! ZAV!"  Heze cried, struggling to get on Zav's shoulder to protect himself from the water.  "Get to shore!  Quickly!  Do it now!  Go!  Faster!"  Zav paddled towards the shore, his head bobbing in and out of the water.  "Blrplblrllr."  He said, struggling to get his words out of the water.  "I don't understand you!  Oh lord I'm going deaf!  It's this damned water!  It eats at your ears, then your eyes, then once your eyes have disintegrated, it pours into your eye-holes and eats your brain!  Quickly, get out!"  Heze was in a full on panic now, his wet fur sticking out like a porcupine.  Zav sighed and felt his toes brush against the sand at the bottom of the lake, using its friction to hop closer to shore.  Heze lept from Zav's head, knocking him back into the water.  Heze shivered on the dry sand, eyes wide and ears twitching.  "I was trying to say I couldn't breathe!"  Zav called from waist deep water, getting on shore and falling to his knees.  Heze lay on his side, not bothering to adjust his belly-bag.  "It was the water!  Did you see it?!  It was worse than that golem!  How did we survive?!"  Zav ignored him, taking off his pack which was blessed by the witches magic, granting it the ability to repel water.  He zipped open Heze's pack and pulled out a handful of mushrooms, stuffing half into Heze's rambling mouth and the other half into his.  They both fell into a deep state of sensual bliss for a couple of seconds.  

"I hope we never see that thing again."  Zav said after awhile, setting the aura dome and laying on his back to stare at the reeling stars.  Heze nodded.  "No kidding.  That water was vicious.  I would be a mile away right now if I wasn't so exhausted."  Zav didn't point out that water was harmless compared to the planet-sized golem that had nearly killed them, instead he took off his clothes and set them on a nearby branch to dry, leaving him with just his underwear as he lay on the sand.  Heze had already fallen asleep, and Zav let the sound of his snoring friend and the rustling leaves of the hundred-man thick forest rock him into his dreams.

Across the canyon, a moonling was possessed by the infinite, only this creature was dark and resembled a bipedal toad.  It leapt from tree to tree, sticking to the large leaves and thick trunks.  The moon was setting, and the moonlight creatures were beginning to recede into their underground catacombs, but this toad was on a mission.  Below her, the canine moonlings were howling to their goddess before turning in for the night.  The ape moonlings with their white fur and long fingers collected fruits for midday snacks in the cave.  

Far from the toad, unknown to the boys and the void, the monstrous creature still lurked, searching for the boy and the cat, possessed all the same as the slimey moonling, but by a much higher, more powerful force.

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