The Crown of Spheres

߷ C H A P T E R - E I G H T E E N ߷

C H A P T E R   E I G H T E E N:

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Life on the water was not something I ever wanted to get used to.

The small bunks had made my back ache, and my neck stiff. I couldn't even sleep through the throbbing of my face as it healed, and that made my temper soar. Although I swallowed most of it, the occasional glare still broke through.

We'd been sailing for just over a day and a night, nearing Plasso Bay with ease after the storm had passed. The strong winds had remained, helping us glide across the rich blue waters where the distant, black clouds of smoke from the burning dock on Monarch Island got smaller and smaller.

It turns out, Atlas and his two companions had doused everything they could. Every stretch of that dock had been drenched in oil, and even the things that weren't covered, were burning now, too. It would take them much long to gather the resources to follow us. But even as guilt ravaged my system for all the collateral damage that occurred because of my escape, I was still pleased I had done it. And I would do it again in a heart beat.

Because of the sunshine, I was able to sit up on the open deck now with Whim at my side. Partially because I wanted more of my stuff to dry and also so I could spend some time alone to go over the Tome and all the information it had in it.

Dressed in a simple cream linen dress, I sat crossed legged with my back against a large grate of... I don't even know what and read, turning the crisp pages of this old book as carefully as I could. It had a little water damage, but most of it was still in pretty good condition. I remembered the information from the previous book I'd found on old world myths and applied that to this book, seeing the hand written accounts of what people speculated it to be.

"What are you reading?" A familiar male voice asked and I looked up, momentarily blinded by the sun. Atlas stared down at me, casting his shadow across my body.

"Oh, just..." I closed the tome, keeping my finger inside so I'd be able to remember what page I was on and turned it over. "It's unmarked."

"It's a journal?" He asked, moving out the way of the sun and coming to sit down beside me. I gazed at his profile for a little too long as he looked at the tome in my hands. Maybe it was a journal.

"It's mostly hand written," I replied, offering it for him to look at. "They have all these accounts from people who have heard of the Crown or encountered it."

"Encountered," he mumbled, looking through the pages and stopping on what looked like a mass of drawings of these horrifying looking creatures. They'd been drawn in an all manner of ways, some simply standing on two legs an eerie hunched looking way, others leaping off the page with claws out stretched. They had round heads, long... snouts, maybe? Although the bridge of what I assumed to be their noses blended in a smooth line up to their foreheads. Their mouths were wide, with razor sharp teeth and thousands of them. I'd seen no animal like it before, but they almost looked like deformed apes or some kind, mixed with a kind of reptile.

"Oh, my Luna... Look at that," I mused, leaning over his arm and looking more closely. "What are these things?"

"It doesn't say," Atlas murmured, turning the page and seeing more drawings of them. Some of the sketches included up close, detailed descriptions of the faces of these things. Leathery grey skin, black, soulless eyes... I didn't like the way it made me feel to look at one, like something was crawling under my skin and turning me ice cold from the inside out. It was instinctual to be repulsed and scared all at the same time.