Always - Moonbli

20. Endings and Beginnings

Qibli

Qibli's head felt fuzzy.

He frowned, trying to remember, but all that came to him was Moon's snout.

He felt like he was floating in space - not in control of any of his limbs, with only a vague sensation of who he was and what the heck he was doing lying facedown on dirt, and with a strangely terrifying feeling of quiet and peace.

Surprise, surprise - he did not like it very much.

Somewhere in the back of his head he remembered a fluttering piece of parchment with shiny purple words scrawled across it, but he couldn't understand why it was so important. He also couldn't make any sense of Moon's cry. 

Slowly, slowly,memories came back to him, and then faster. 

He came back into consciousness and was aware of a faraway, painfully familiar voice shouting. Moon. 

He tried to move towards her, tried to get towards the sound of her voice, but he only succeeded in twitching a little. 

The words suddenly made sense to him and he frowned in his head, since right then he couldn't physically frown in his current state. 

 Moon was screaming, 'What have you done to him? Reverse it!' Qibli's mind dimly registered that the 'him' she was referring to was most likely Qibli himself,and a small glow of happiness lit up in him, but it was quickly extinguished by overwhelming fear - she had no idea of the amount of danger she was putting herself in, trying to revive him when he was already - well, almost -functioning. 

He tried to make himself yell to warn her to stop, but no noise came out except a very, very tiny whimper. There was no way that could've been heard over Moon yelling, 'Reverse it!' but somehow she did, and he felt her gaze boring into him concernedly. 

'He's alive,' she whispered softly. 

Qibli heard Darkstalker scoff. 'Of course he is. I just murdered ONE DRAGON. I'm not going to flip and destroy Pyrrhia, for heaven's sake. Why does everyone always think I kill for no reason?' When there was no answer, he let out a long-suffering sigh. 

'He's not dead, just under a semi-coma, I guess. He won't be aware of his surroundings for possibly forever- I mean, until I get the spell off him.' Qibli wasn't so sure about that - the centipede burrowing near his snout seemed real enough to him, and so was the pounding headache that culminated due to all of the shouting and loud voices and memory rush. 

But whatever. 

He comprehended Moon's yelp. 'Then get it off him!' she demanded. 'NOW!' Qibli heard a harsh, cruel chuckle and hate bubbled in him as Nightmare's cold voice rang out, 'Dragonet,you have spirit. It's a shame your bunch wasn't actually working for us. Do you actually think Darkstalker's actually going to listen to you? Ha.' 

Darkstalker interjected, 'Moon, for now he is safe - well, fine, anyways.' Qibli heard Moon's low growl. Finally, she relented, saying, 'Okay. Fine. If we're going to hang around doing nothing, then tell me how you managed to transform into Qibli.' 

Very carefully, Qibli opened an eye. The only thing he managed to get out of this operation was dirt and grit everywhere, including his sensitive eyeballs, so he gave up. 

'It was quite simple,' Nightmare was sneering. 'While you were away in the afternoon helping that traitor Cobalt get to her sleeping spot I put Qibli into a magical sleep and changed into him. Then I gave you wrong information about the location of the lake and persuaded you to change it so you would fall into my trap.