“Great Oracle, we have terrible news!” shouted Noel at the top of her lungs as we stepped out of the cave. The Oracle was sitting under a tree, eating doubleberries while Sharun stood with the Dragon’s Tooth aimed at the cave’s entrance.
“What?” cried the Oracle as she shot up. Her eyes widened as she saw me limp next to Noel. “How are you alive?”
Oh, so I really was supposed to die back there. She made my ‘destiny’ sound like some sort of great honor? Gosh darned fanatic. “I was ready to fulfill my destiny, great Oracle, but something truly horrible happened as I bowed my face upon hearing The Terrible’s breathing.”
“Sharun,” said the Oracle, breaking me off. Sharun pointed his weapon at me.
“No, wait!” said Noel. “The God of Madness—”
“If you’re going to lie, you should know what you’re lying about,” said the Oracle with a frown. It was hard to make out her facial expressions because of the hair in front of her face, but her displeasure and confusion was obvious. “I want to know how you two managed to get out of there without fulfilling your destiny, again, but I’m sure my master will want you nuisances dealt with instead.”
“No, you must listen, the God of Madness—”
“Cannot be involved here!” finished the Oracle as she pointed to the sky. “There is no moon! Only the red star reigns in the skies tonight. The enemy cannot be involved and you are lying to me!”
“It was a flock of birds!” I shouted.
The Oracle paused. Sharun, who had been stepping towards us, also froze. “A flock of birds?” said the Oracle, slowly. “Lies.”
“It’s true,” said Noel, quickly. “There were thirty of them!”
“Thirty…” whispered the Oracle.
“They were being led by a small bird with a crown,” I added.
The Oracle’s eyes widened. “No, it can’t be. That enemy hasn’t left its perch for millennia. Why would it risk my master’s wrath by…” The Oracle kept muttering to itself but then she looked up at the sky. “Of course, the moon isn’t out. I was wrong, this is the perfect night.” The Oracle faced us and her lips twisted into an angry snarl. “What did the birds do?”
“They took control of The Terrible!” Noel and I shouted at the same time.
The Oracle’s mouth froze agape. She tried to say something but the words couldn’t leave her mouth. It would be almost comical if it weren’t for Sharun standing right next to her with the Dragon’s Tooth. “Took control?” said the Oracle at last. “How?”
“I don’t know what happened,” I began answering. It didn’t seem like the Oracle was insisting to speak with Noel the way she had when we first visited her haunt. “I felt a pain in my head, like needles piercing the inside of my skull. Suddenly, I got really, really mad. I can’t remember what I was mad about, only that it made me want to attack Noel.”
“And it looked like he was reaching for my neck when the birds showed up,” said Noel.
“And they flapped their wings all around us, like a tornado of birds,” I said.
“And they made weird noises,” said Noel.
“And shed strange lights,” I said. “The lights were so bright we had to close our eyes.”
“And by the time we opened our eyes, the birds were gone and The Terrible went crazy,” said Noel.
“Crazy?” repeated the Oracle.
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“Yes,” I said. “The pain in my head was gone, along with the anger, so I looked up and saw The Terrible.”
“It’s not a blessing, great Oracle! It’s a five star monster!” said Noel, even though she knew the Oracle was probably aware of The Terrible’s true nature.
“It was a monster made of stone,” I said, “shiny, red stone.”
“And it began thrashing about!” said Noel.
“And crashed into the walls, the ground, the ceiling,” I said.
“And it made the whole cave collapse in on itself!” finished Noel.
While we were telling our story, the Oracle grew increasingly more disturbed and impatient. She started tapping her feet, biting her lips, chewing on her nails, and twirling the ends of her long, white hair. She interjected from time to time, but by the end, she was casting furtive glances at the cave’s entrance.
“You must do something,” said Noel. “I don’t think that cave-in is going to finish that monster.”
“The birds made it go out of control, we have to stop it or it’ll destroy everything!” I said.
“Alright, alright,” said the Oracle. She raised her finger and glared at us with her one uncovered eye. “If my master wasn’t busy with his enemy right now, those birds would’ve never dared venture so far away from their tree. And once my master is free, I’ll ask him if what you said was true and believe me, if a single thing you’ve told me tonight was a lie, I will give you the most painful death imaginable!”
“Whatever you say,” I said, “but you should hurry up with your preparations. That monster could come out here at any—”
There was a loud crash behind me. Noel and I raced forward, just as the Oracle signaled Sharun to get in front of her. We passed by the two of them, pretending like we were going to take cover behind them, but then just kept running. The Oracle stared at the cloud of dust in front of the cave’s entrance for a long while. It was only when she looked over her shoulder and met my gaze that she realized that she’d been had. She yelled at Sharun to go after us just as another explosion rocked the cave’s entrance behind her.
“I’m not falling for it this time!” said the Oracle as she saw the panic on my face. I turned my face around and told Noel to run even harder. We dashed through the clearing and into the dense forest just as high pitched creaks and a shout that sounded like nails on steel echoed throughout the Forest of Three. We didn’t need to look over our shoulder’s to tell that The Terrible was on the loose.
---
Noel and I ran through the forest as quickly as we could. We tried not to think too hard about the Oracle and Sharun, since if the Oracle didn’t actually have a way of controlling the five star monster, she was almost certainly going to die. I looked at Noel and saw the concern on her face. Even if she’d just found out that her uncle Sharun had killed her dad, Sharun was still the man who raised her. In a way, he was the person she actually considered to be her father.
“The trees are tall enough to hide us from The Terrible,” I said, trying to distract her.
“Yeah, that thing’s huge. The canopy will be right up in its face,” said Noel.
“We won’t have that kind of cover on the plains,” I said.
Noel nodded as she jumped over a thick root. “We can try to stick to the river for most of the way, there are a lot of trees, rocks, and small valleys. Those will provide some cover.”
I winced as I walked over a patch of gravel. My body was aching, and I had cuts and bruises all over the place. Both Noel and I were breathing heavily, and would need to rest soon. There was no way we would be able to run all the way back to the Jora tribe’s camp.
“Listen, Noel,” I said, between deep gasps of breath, “I had another idea while we were lying to the Oracle.”
“What is it?” asked Noel.
“Why should we run to the Jora tribe’s camp, anyway?” I said.
“What do you mean? We need to tell them about The Terrible and try to run away as fast as we can,” she said.
“But what if they don’t believe us,” I said. “And even if they do, it’ll take a while for them to pack up camp. It’s late at night, most of them will be asleep, and not ready to run away immediately. And people like Starry will insist on bringing relics and maybe even those useless blessings he keeps in that cave of his.”
“I see your point,” said Noel. “But what else can we do? There’s a five star monster on the loose, we have no choice but to run.”
“Yes,” I said slowly, staring at the sky. The moon was gone but so was the red star. The sky was peppered with white points of light; constellations I’d never seen, stars I’d never known, a galaxy that was to me, as alien as E.T. “You’re right. We can’t fight that monster, so we have no choice but to run. But we do have one choice that we can still make.”
A shooting star cut across the sky. I blinked and it was gone.
“We can choose where we run to.”