Children Of The Sky (The Scripts Of Neptune, Book 2)

Chapter 9

The Eldúraen monastery was gone. Stones that'd been nearly swallowed by the ground were all that remained of the once-great, castle-like structure. There was a weight on Jack's heart as he soared just above the treetops; he'd had friends here. Good friends. Good people that the sands of time had taken and laid to rest.

The moonstone caught his sharp eyes when he passed over it, the blue crystal channeling the lavender light of the rising moon and casting fractals on the stone slab beneath it. It'd been at the center of the monastery, the core of a perfectly domed room meant to protect it from the elements. Jack saw, now, that it hadn't needed it; where the rock beneath it had eroded and weathered over the centuries, the moonstone was the same, girthed in reshulia blossoms, its points reaching toward the sky. Jack found it a bit ironic that the object which was said to be the key to stopping the end of the world was kept so close to the temple of the one who would allegedly seek to end it in the first place.

The Eldúraen watchtower, as the locals apparently knew it, was little changed as well. Jack knew it by a different name: the temple of Ness, goddess of day and night. The massive tree stood tall and gnarled by age, stretching out ancient branches as big around as houses from a trunk with the diameter of Roddin's extensive throne room. The leaves flourished in the summer heat, swinging from slender, viny branches, swaying in the breeze and making a sound that sent shivers down Jack's spine as he flew through a gap and into the hidden cavern beneath the shelter of the foliage.

Folding his wings in, Jack darted through a hollowed-out knot in the three-foot-thick bark of a branch, then spread them wide and flapped rapidly to brake and land gracefully on the moonlit floor within. Sneezing in the whirl of dust he'd stirred up, he shook out his feathers and morphed back into his human body.

The hall he'd landed in was saturated with dust and dark as midnight with the exception of the pillars of pale purple moonlight streaking through the porthole-shaped windows. Jack shivered in the night chill as he walked toward the trunk, caught halfway between loving and loathing the earthy scent of rotting wood. This tree was monstrous and old, and though it'd been well-maintained in its days as a temple, it looked like nature was beginning to run its course in swathes of the ceiling and polished floor.

The main hall was still magnificent as ever. Pillars punctuated the edges of the circular room, and the ceiling arched above into a point. Jack stopped in his tracks when he saw the floor; there were hundreds of footprints in the thick dust. Fresh footprints. On instinct, he held his breath, listening for movement, voices, anything. All was silent save for his own heartbeat.

Glancing around, now on edge, Jack morphed and pumped his wings, making for the ceiling. There was a platform in the point the size of a dinner plate, suspended from rods of steel, meant for placing candles on for certain ceremonies. For Jack and his brother, it served another purpose entirely.

It was cramped in the cone, and Jack, as always, had to carefully maneuver and clutch one of the rods in his talons to get to the folded parchment left on the platform. Craning his neck, he snatched it in his beak and released the rod, letting himself fall twenty feet before snapping out his wings and catching himself. Lighting on the dusty ground, he dropped the note from his beak and quickly morphed, then tore the seal and took a few steps backward into a hallway to catch a moonbeam to see by. Rook's writing was neat as always, all properly punctuated and perfect in ways Jack probably wasn't even seeing. It was a mildly annoying consequence of having a brother who spent half his time writing.

Dear, dear brother, it read. Congratulations on getting caught! (Finally.) Took you long enough.

I suppose you're worried about me. But you know by this note, at least, that I didn't get caught as well, so you can rest your pretty little head on that matter. Jack snorted and ran a hand down his face, leaning against the wall before reading more. Don't bother looking for me; I'm not around. Not Ctash, anyway. I'm headed for Etniria. You always promised me a trip there and never delivered, so...Min and I decided to go ahead and go. I'm thirteen. I can look after myself. Don't worry, yeah? I'll leave another message at Avani's temple so you know where to meet us.