Artemis Child

Artemis Child Ch61

  Gena after hearing all of us get pumped to get out of this monster hell walked forward to the pillar not really knowing what to do.
She shuffled uncomfortably in her footing as she got in a face to face area with the stone. She looked hard at the stone, trying to find a location to focus her attention on. "Uh.. could you like...open please?" She asked the pillar. As if it was able to really understand her the pillar uncoiled itself in multiple layer like a snake coming down to be a huge stone cobra. The mouth started to open reavealing a large golden fog that leaked out onto the floor, showing hard against the red soil that. "I guess it worked?" She said in a defensive stance because the last snake she saw wasn't friendly, especially in this the environment.
   "You simply walk through the portal." Geb stated gesturing to his mouth. "The portal is its throat." Max said not trusting it. He withdrew his sword ready to defend his girlfriend. "It's okay." Gena said walking into its mouth and into the golden fog. She was gone in seconds as the fog engulfed her. Even her presence seemed to fade from this.
  Andrew went after her, then I followed, then Lexi and Serena. A whole new environment washed over my senses. The smell of water, trees, flowers, other animals, it was over welcoming to my scenery parts. My ears twitched at the sound of birds, my nose at the fresh air, my hairs at the slightest breeze. You can't miss something like a simple breeze as much as me after going to a place like that. The air so heavy, thick, sappy, and stale.
   Everyone touched the grass, enjoyed the breeze, stretched and almost started crying. Lexi was smiling so much, her eyes watery and starting to get puffy. She gave a forced breath of a cough fighting back the joy that wanted to just take over.
   The snake closed as a beast of a being clawed it's way out of the mouth. "Its me." The monster said its voice sounding distant like in a cave, but muffled like it echoed in a bucket. It had a body made of roots, vines, moss and stones. Sitting atop the plated shoulders was an antler covered deer skull. The eye sockets of the skull sunk deep like midnight reaching out at the moon. The face told me exactly what it was. It was a Leshen monster, but the being was Geb.
  "Don't be alarmed." He said with his different voice."I'm the only me of any of these timelines, my body takes on the form of the me that would have existed here. Take a look at that one, he is already making his first time-shift. Marc was the person he was talking about. Dark maroon scales climbed up his skin like heat rash they rose from no where and hardened into their current positions. His eyes were stretched slightly and his pupils changed to that of a snake. He had little wings spring out through his monster hide clothing. Other than that he was almost the same. "Looks like he would of been a winged lizard of some sort." Toni said looking at me. The only thing that came to mind when I looked at his face was wyvern, but he looked nothing like the ones Andrew and I had fought on the train. "Wyvern maybe?" I said with a shrug.
   Lexi touched her brothers face. "Yuck, some how you look even worst than when you were born." She teased her sibling. He looked at his own hands, touched the scales, flapped his little wings. "So where are we headed now?" Serena asked looking around into the woods, then up into cloud rolling sky. "We should maybe look for a town or something get some type of understanding of our terrain and what we are supposed to be doing." Andrew stated while tightening his weapon belt. "Yeah, I could go for some food." Toni suggested. His girlfriend handed him a bit of monster meal, "eat up then." He looked at it with a grim expression. "Its so bland." He gave a sigh and took the food from her.
  We began to set out into the woods. Just before leaving we watched the snake shift back into a pool. It slithered and coiled tight around itself going up and up before shifting into a giant stone pillar like the one in Monster Hell.
   The air here saturated us in sweat, our clothes sticking to our skin like heated up plastic wrap. The clothes worn down by sweat as we struggled along the ever twisting roots, vines, underbrush, and occasional dip made by possibly erosion? Maybe even claw marks of some huge dinosaur of the past.
  My arm felt heavy from my fatigue setting in, and the moisture in the air made my nerves feel bad around the upperside of my bicep. The trees we climbed and shuffled past looked like the ones back home, nothing here seemed out of place or even different. Until we came apon a small road and a wagon was passing. The wagon was being driven by two monster farmers, and the animals that stood where horses normally would were golems of hay and red clay.

  End Of Part 1