The Moon Spawn #1 (Waverly Stump and The 7 Realms)

Chapter Two

After several long sparring sessions with HalfHyde, Waverly felt very exhausted and went straight to bed. She forgot all about her promise to watch the moon with Judson. She even forgot about eating supper or taking an evening bath.

She crawled into bed and slept loosely without properly tucking herself in. It was a belief in all the realms that if one slept untucked they were likely to have nasty mares that would take the sleep out of their eyes for weeks or more.

Waverly forgot all about that as well and went straight to sleep. As she slept, she experienced a crippling mare that burned in her mind for several days.

She was sailing stormbound on a ship; a very beautiful ship with golden oars and a silver plated hull that struggled across stubborn ocean waves. The ship was constantly getting slapped from left to right by these waves. Waverly stood in the poop deck near the top of a wooden mast, watching the bleak horizon. She ignored the storm of the seas and kept muttering to herself "almost there! almost there!".

The waves finally succeeded in toppling the ship and Waverly sank to the depths of the black sea. She felt her insides heat up as she floated because she hated darkness and she feared it more than anything else.

For how long she was continually pulled deeper into the ocean, she did not know. She could not breathe. Her lungs steamed underwater and her eyes burned from straining for clearer vision. Suddenly, she was sucked from the ocean by a force she could not see.

Waverly looked about at her new location. She was in a country. A large country that she could not recognize because she had never left Bremeton in all her life. The skies were a mix of pitch black and midnight blue, void of stars or a moon. The ground was cracked everywhere as far as the eyes could see and thick black smoke erupted from these cracks. Waverly tried to walk but her boots were stuck fast to the solid earth.

Swirling all around her were clouds of black smoke that hid the rest of the landscape from view. Mountain tops jutted out towards the sky and Waverly guessed that the country was probably one far far away because the mountains in Bremeton did not reach towards the sky. As she wondered why she was in a strange place, a cold feeling suddenly overcame her. The sound of footsteps approaching from behind shook the ground. Waverly did not wish to behold what creature had such might enough to shake the ground when it walked.

As the earth continued to shake, the ground in front of her cracked open revealing a large pit. More black smoke billowed out of the pit but despite that, Waverly could spot the faintest light inside of it. She became overwhelmed by warmth and forgot all about her fear. She curiously peered down into the near bottomless pit and heard her name. Waverly could have run or at least tried to but the voice of the caller was female and so gentle that she felt extreme pity for whoever was at the bottom.

"Who are you down there?" Waverly whispered unsure of how keen the caller's ears were but the reply came almost immediately.

"Save me, daughter!" The voice pleaded.

Waverly was taken aback.

Now she wanted so much to run.

The voice had called her daughter.

She inched backward. Her own voice became stuck in her throat and her bones shivered. The voice had carried so much power and gentleness and truth that its effects washed over Waverly and made her feel faint.

The pit ran so deep into the ground that Waverly could feel no air from it at all. She wondered how the woman inside it managed to breathe.

"Who — who are you?" Waverly asked with a little shiver.

The pit seemed to exhale at that moment because a violent yet warm and very smelly wind blew into Waverly's face. She coughed and turned away. The hole must have been eating lots of rotten things and forgot to clean its mouth, Waverly thought. She wondered if she could jump in at that moment to rescue the woman beneath.