𝒮𝓉𝒶𝓇 𝑅𝒾𝓋𝑒𝓇 [Gold Moon]

Chapter Twenty-one ✧ Betray us

   I can't sleep. Down a path through the trees there's a mist covered lake, calm and reflective. In it I can see myself. I feel a weight pulling me down, the sky rumbles in my ears.
   In the night I'd think I could see her, bright and glowing, but I don't. I don't glow like he says. I'll never be a star.
   What does glow however, the flashes striking the water's surface. Ripples sent my way by the light. They warp my reflection.
   Then, without explanation, I'm tackled to the ground by a set of talons. Staring me down, pinning me to the shore, is a massive creature of gray feathers and loose stitching. Long, black, forked tendrils spread out from its tail, curling out behind it like snakes ready to bite. It opens its cold eyes, three of them, two of which poorly fitted into the same socket.
   It screams. It screams and I can see the fangs pasted to the top of its beak.
  I try to move but its grip tightens. It takes me.
Ripped from the earth, my feet flailing in the open air, I'm kicking trying to get free.
"Han!!"
   I'm too far. It's too fast. I can't get loose, and if I did at this point I'd fall into the trees.
   From above I can see how dead the land is. The branches twisting and reaching up like spears, and now I have something even worse on my mind. I won't die.
   If I fell, was impaled by the trees, or would the branches crumble and snap?
If it eats me will I continue to be alive? At what point would my consciousness dissolve?
I would feel every moment.
   I see stone pillars, old and decorated with lichen. In the middle of the crumbling pillars, a large statue, twenty feet high, of an angel sitting with her legs folded. In her lap was a nest.
   The bird releases me. It drops me onto the nest stitched together almost as poorly as itself.
   The nest was made of several cobbled together items, branches, straw, various animal hides, hair; it smelled sulfuric. It had a pile of shells and bones to one side, no sign of the creatures they once were, bite marks carved into them.
   The angel looks down at me with a loving smile, a terrifying smile. The bird looms over me similarly. It's stitching, that chimera like appearance. I know what you are.
"you're just like me."
   It screams in response, striking me with one of its long tails. I feel a drop of blood trace my jawline.
   Of all the blood I've spilt, it makes sense that I'm not alive.
   I bury my head in my knees. I don't want this pain, I don't want it to hurt me, but what can I do?
How much blood do you have left in you? Surely not much, I can see it matted in your feathers.
I know you don't feel. Very soon I might be as drained as you.
   It pecks at my head, It chirps at me. I can hear its eyes shift in its socket, wetly rolling against each other.
   Lightning strikes. I look to my right and all I see is a wall of wet, violet indigo glow. I feel the goosebumps on my skin tingle as my hair stands on end, I see it too, electricity flowing between the mass and I.
   I shiver as a gust of air swats the creature away. "Foolish moon child," a voice booms in my head, "you wish to be alone in this place, you wish to suffer the wrath of panic."
"It's you"
   I look around in all directions before he flashes to the top of the statue's head. He prunes his feathers on top of the smiling woman.
"I know of you."
"What?"
"He spoke of you once before, and I have spoken in turn."
   I take a deep breath, then another. "I won't wander off again."
"I must ask something more of you"
I look at him.
He continues, "Would you give yourself for the world's sake, or the world for yourself?"
"I don't think I have the right to answer that."
He looks back at me.
"What? Is it not obvious? I don't have the right to put myself over real human beings."
"An acceptable answer," he says.
   Lightning flashes, and as soon as they arrived, the wall, the bird, they were gone.
"Rhine!!"
   Han came running from beyond the pillars, he climbed into the nest and scooped me up.
"Are you ok?"
"Uhm, I think so"
"Don't ever do that again."
"I know, I won't."
  He buried his face in the crevice of my neck, I just sat there, looking into the distance.
I can still see him there in the tree line, Wind Witherer.
"There is no sunlight here, no moonlight here, the ravaged land is rotting."
   I feel a cold sweat and the promise of malice. Somehow I know Han can't hear him. Somehow I know that's what he wants.
"Han," I whisper, "I'm scared."
"I know," he whispers back.
Do you? Do you know how it feels? I'm not even sure I know. I don't know. It hurts.
   We leave, walking in the dark. I can still hear his voice in my head. I want him to leave me alone, I'm done talking with that bird. Why can't I have silence in my head?
"The well of sympathy I once had has dried, however my desire for vengeance is ever stronger. Shatter us all, my son."
"Han?"
"I know."