The Luna Temple: Fire #2

Gigi

~~~Ryder~~~

We rode from the Earth Temple in the morning and headed to the next. The fight we had replays in my mind and something keeps bugging me. But not as much as it does Silas. We all want to stop, the ride is tedious but we all agreed we'd prefer get as far away from the place as possible. By evening we arrive at a lake so still, it looked like a sheet of ice with some gold from the sunset. The sound of birds quickly decreased, making the area dead quiet and peaceful, and for once since I set off on this mad trip, I felt calm and almost happy.

It was late afternoon and we doubted we'd find a better place so we gather enough wood for the nitght, studying the map again.
"Ok, if we keep heading in the same direction then up the lower part of the mountain instead of going round we could reach the temple in a week." Luna says.
"Yes, or we could go round the mountain, it may take longer but we have higher chances of all of us making it there," argues Silas.
"Silas, the mountain has a path going up, we won't fall." I tell him, tired of the repetitive argument.
"A thin path and a long way down." Silas adds, turning to me.
"You won't fall," Luna says in a patronising tone.
"And you can prove it," Silas retorts.
"I'm thinking of proving myself wrong." Luna mutters, looking down.
"Ryder, do you see?" Silas says, at this I give a look to Luna that says 'shut up.'
"Well, do you want to reach the temple in one week or two?" I ask Silas, knowing he'd choose the mountain, he's never been patient.
"The mountain will take two weeks because we'll be tired and I'll be holding you up." Silas states and I just remembered how stubborn he could be.

We give up on the argument and pack the maps back up. We light the fire and sit there in silence. I don't think any of us will be able to sleep tonight, the weird creatures we fought were still in the back of our minds, waiting to attack us in our sleep. We sit there as the sky gets darker and the temperature gets slightly higher. Even without the fire we could see the meadow and lake around us. The flowers glowed in all sorts of colours, from red to blue to magenta, and the lake even gave off a soft blue glow. I look at Silas, who is watching a fly with a flashing white light as it skims the lake and buzzes around. Only Luna seems to not enjoy this, like she is trying to remember something.

This was when everything started happening so fast. Luna is about to shout something when tentacles come out of the water and rapped around Silas and take him under screaming. I met Luna's eyes and we dived into the water. We couldn't see where it came from because it's too dark below us. Luna grabs Silas' hand and I take the knife from her belt and stab the tentacle. It releases Silas but keeps shooting it's tentacles out, trying to stab us now rather than drag us down. I move my arm out of the way just in time as a tentacle shoots between me and Silas. We climb out to find out horses lying on the floor, dead. We immediately put our backs together and get our weapons out, I pass Luna her knife and we turn round, covering our surroundings. Luna takes the backpacks and takes a look inside, the shake of her head tells us nothing is useable in there. She takes the maps and folds it into her pocket. She is about to get up to join us when Silas whispers to us, telling us not to move. As we stand in silence I can hear something behind me. It's so quiet I have to strain to hear it's breathing.

Then I see something moving under the surface of the water.
"We have to move." I say as quietly as I can.
"NO! Not yet." Silas replies in an urgent tone. I can see the creature moving in circles under the water then go deeper until I can't see it. That is when I have an idea, if the creature is doing what I think it is, then it should work... or I'm dead.
"I have an idea, but you both have to stay still until you see a chance to run," I whisper.
"What are you planning?" Asks Luna and I just shake my head in reply. She nods back in approval and Silas moves his arm slowly, and far enough, to give a thumbs up. By this I can tell the creature behind is closer. I look back at the lake.

I have to wait for a while, timing is everything but, I have no idea how fast the creatures are. As soon as I see the creature from the lake rising back up I just know now is the time to run. I spare a glance behind me, enough to see a creature with six slimy black legs and a huge body with a scaly dragon head, jump over the group and head towards me. I duck and it is struck by a tentacle, from the creature in the lake, and brought down into the water. I run for the trees behind Luna and Silas. I make the tree line just as another tentacle strikes the tree next to me. We keep running until Silas trips and rolls down into a ditch, we jog after him. All of us breathing hard.

"I guess now we don't have to worry about leaving the horses when we climbs the mountain," Silas says, clearly upset since he loved that horse. Now we have to walk to that mountain and climb it. I can see we are all thinking about this. On foot we are more vulnerable and we'll be exhausted from walking. I hear a branch break behind us, I take out my sword slowly, and study the area. There is no way we can run some more. Plus we are long distance runners, we can't sprint from whatever might be here, assuming it's an animal.
"We should get moving," Luna whispers, looking in the same direction I am.
"Which way?" Silas asks, getting up from the floor, boomerang in hand. In response Luna heads up the ditch in the same direction we were running.

As we walk, we curve to the left and soon we start heading in the direction of the mountains. We kept hearing noise behind us, like cracking branches, or leaves crunching under a huge weight, but nothing attacks us. An hour later we notice the noise has gone.
"I think we should go round the mountain, we'll be too tired to climb it." Luna whispers. Silas grins and we all agree to this. We stay silent and keep alert for the rest of the walk. As the sun comes up we stop by a fallen tree to rest, this doesn't last long because we begin to hear the snaps and cracks again.
"We need to find out what is tailing us," Silas says.
"What if we can't fight it," I ask.
"Well it's obviously not trying to kill us, my best guess is that it's weak as well." Replies Silas and I agree with him. This thing is following us, probably to find the way to the next temple. We have to get rid of it. Luna tells us to split so we find out who it's following.

As soon as we get to an opening Silas offers to go through the middle, me in the woods on the right and Luna left. The noise behind us tells us to get a move on, so we split. We join in the the woods on the other side and wait. After a while we find the creature was following Silas. It was an unusually large wolf and came to our shoulder height, on all fours. It had a grey coat and what was most odd, apart from it's eyes which were green, it seems to be trying to make noise. Though it can't seem to in the meadow. It's half way till it stops suddenly and studies us, but we shouldn't be visible. Silas steps out into the meadow, we follow his lead but a little more cautiously.

"How do we get rid of it?" Silas asks, cocking his head slightly.
"Fetch.... then we run away?" I ask.
"It'll just catch up with us." Luna answers, shaking her head as she thinks to herself.
"We could always leave Silas here." I say with a small smile. This only gets a glare from Silas, but Luna appreciates the joke by failing to keep her face straight.
"We'll try your fetch idea," says Silas. At this I go into the woods, find a good lengthy stick and hand it to Silas. He refuses, so I lob it, it goes over the wolf, a good few meters above and yet the wolf catches it. Silas just laughs.
"Here, this is how it's done," Silas gets out his boomerang, "it would try searching for this but won't find anything." I do hope this works, honest, but I would laugh if it didn't, it'll wipe the smug look off his face. He throws it into the woods behind, the wolf bounds after it, it's so silent I just wonder, did it want our attention or was it helping someone find us. If it were the second option, why would it be silent now.
"Any minute now." Silas says, hand open for the boomerang.

After a few minutes the boomerang comes back, but it was in the wolf's mouth. It came over and dropped it at Silas' feet. It sat wagging it's tail as Silas picks up the boomerang and tucks it in his belt.

"What shall we name him?" Silas asks happily.
"We...are...not...keeping...it." says Luna, carefully pronouncing each word as she looks at Silas is disbelief.
"Well good luck getting rid of him." Silas replies.
"It can't join us." Luna says, she tries to scare the wolf but it just stares back, lowering its head slightly.
"I guess he can be called..." Silas starts, then his eyes light up and he looks back at the wolf, "Gigi." He finishes with pride, the name he gave the horse still lying near the lake.

The wolf didn't look that happy about it, but didn't complain as Silas allowed him to join us. Though I don't think Luna was all that ecstatic.