Double Rainbow

Dark Rainbow-9

I hear voices in my dream, calling out to me. "What?" I say drowsily, looking up to see nothing at all.

I hear one long resonant sound, lighting up the darkness like thunder across a cloudy sky.

My ears sting and my vision is blurry when I wake up. I feel a raindrop slide down my nose and remember I fell asleep in a cave. The past few days have not been kind to me. My fur is a wreck, and the braid Avery made has long since turned into a tangle of knots down my face.

I still see something at the edge of my vision, so I turn to face it. A glimmering Canira, glowing too bright for me to see anything else, stands there silently.

"Who're you?" I mutter drowsily.

"I am the Unknown Canira. I am here to offer you a choice."

I curl back up in a ball. "I choose to have five more minutes."

"No! It happens as we speak. You must come with me."

She grabs my paw and we disappear into darkness. I come out of it on the other side, and the sky is red.

"You were supposed to stop this," I hear whispered in my ear. "It was your destiny and you failed."

I get up and stretch my wings to find that I have none. My fur is still black, almost russet in this intense light, but the spectrums. I am pure black, black as the night sky. My body is leaner, swifter, more angled to the ground. My paws are less flexible and my ears are pointed. I am a wolf. Something about the air here feels familiar, the sounds and the sights even more so.

That's when the sky explodes. I see it pretty quickly, what looks like a comet in the distance, if comets were the size of the moon and growing fast.

Someone runs past me, a small, weak-looking pack behind him. I blend into the pack, running with them like I've done it my whole life.

A black and white wolf guides everyone else into a cave, pups in the furthest back along with the old. I go to the middle, not wanting to see what lies in front or behind. The ringing sound of shattering stone fills my ears and the world caves in around me. I close my eyes, finding myself holding on to someone else. Dust fills my nostrils and yelps and the sound of cracking bones fills the cave, then it's all silent.

I open my eyes and see bloody stone. Another wolf is pressed up against me, breathing heavily. "The stars..." he pants, "The stars were wrong."

He raises his head to the roof of the cave. "If you're listening, Star Spots, I hate you! I hate you for lying, I hate you for not helping, and I hate you for not sending her to save us!"

He turns to me. "Who are you? You're not from our pack, that's for sure."

"My name is Dark Rainbow and I-"

His curious glance turns to a dead stare, a slightly insane one. "It's you. Finally decided to show up, did we now? This was the Ancients doing, wasn't it? Sure, let's send in our hero after the meteor comes. I would've done it, you know. If they doubted me, well, I had reason to. I did."

I have no idea what he's saying, so I try to get out, but I can't fly and the stone is much too steep to climb up.

"Who are you and what are you talking about?"

"You of course, who else?" he says like it's the most natural thing in the world.

I look at him sideways, trying to figure out if he's delirious or joking. Then, a quick flash of memory comes back: The stars surrounding me, the five Ancients, not wolves, but Canii, sent me off, back to save the world of the wolves again. When the world begins to fall, the spectrums of hope will answer the call. "Storm Runner will help you. He will be with you." They promised.