The hunting beast cocked its head to listen to the Air Lord’s song. And that gave Jupiter his opportunity.

With his hands over his head, Jupiter reached down and gripped the handle that protruded from the sheath across his back. In one movement he pulled the taruska - long blade from his back and cut down at the hunting beast. He cut into the fur-feathers of its neck and it snarled then leapt away.

‘Where did you get that?’ Maggie said.

‘It’s the one I took earlier today. Put it on when we left The Jupiter.’

He had never used a sword before, and this one seemed to him more like a long carving knife. Manisaurs fought with their feet first, the blade got used in a supporting role. With his two hands on the handle the balance seemed a little off, but the grip he took felt familiar. He grinned.

Another hunting beast leapt at him, he stepped aside and gave the beast a raking slice along its flank as it passed. The thraqanonkra yelped and fell to the ground.

‘You can fight with that sword thing? How?’ said Maggie.

‘Cricket. It’s about the length of a cricket bat. I just try to hit them for a six.’

The temple priest stepped away. Maggie and Jupiter sidled after them with the beasts more wary now. The Air Lord’s attention had focussed on Berg and Zaj where they squared up against the rest of the thraqanonkra beasts.

‘We have to help them,’ said Jupiter. He began to edge towards the other. ‘Together we have a chance.' He caught Tamm’s eye and the other group fought towards them.

‘Take us to the portal,’ Maggie said to the zenvrikan priest. ‘To the way between worlds.’

Two of the beasts jumped at the same time. The priest kicked out with their feet and spun one beast away. Jupiter stepped into the line of the others beast’s bound, raised his taruska’s handle point downward, and the beast ran onto the vertical blade. The blow knocked Jupiter to the ground.

‘Okay,’ Jupiter grunted and spun to his feet and swept the blade into his hand again. ‘Can’t block a whole beast like a ball.’ A beast tried to take advantage of his fall but he swung again, connected with its neck, and it fell wetly to the ground.

A new song warbled out and the creatures milled in confusion, then a beast fell on its fallen pack mate and bit at it open wound Jupiter had cut.

‘Come,’ said the priest. ‘While they are distracted.’ The three moved sideways away from the pack that had gathered around to feed. Jupiter had not noticed a fourth member had joined them. A smaller dark person.

They had got twenty meters away, and close to Tamm and Berg before the Air Lord’s song changed. And the thraqanonkra hunters took after Jupiter and Maggie again. The beast’s snouts matted with the blood and gore from the fallen beast.

Jupiter noticed someone had joined them. An imp. Their black body had been wrapped in a complex webbing, while a headpiece glimmered when they moved.

‘Breeze,’ said Jupiter. ‘Where did you come from?’

Jupiter looked up and saw Tamm and Berg fought the rest of the thraqanonkra pack. Maggie and the priest had reached the entrance to the ramp. The imp stood beside him still as the pack ran at them.

‘Good to see you buddy. Let’s see if we can stop these bastard creatures.’

‘Yes friend,’ said the imp. ‘Let’s do just that.’

Jupiter ran at the remaining creatures just as they jumped to attack. His unexpected move opened their bellies to his taruska, and he swung for the boundary like making a home run. The first beast he nicked, the second he cut, then on the upswing his blade bit deep into the third.

But the momentum of the creatures’ attack brought them down on top of him and he fell under their weight.

Jupiter struggled to regain his feet, the beasts writhed and tangled him in their limbs as they scrambled to regain their feet. The mouth of one snapped at him, and he thrust his hand under its jaw and clawed at the beast’s windpipe.

Except this was no mammal, his fingers only met muscle. He pushed its head away as if he fended off a tackler in rugby.

The imp struggled under the weight of another beast who had its teeth gripped on the imp’s webbing harness. Jupiter got his feet onto the ground, dived, and rugby tackled the creature away from the imp like he would clear a ruck. The beast still had a grip on the imp’s webbing and ripped it free, the headpiece flashed a purple-blue color then went dark as it fell.

Jupiter stood and kicked the thraqanonkra in the head and it flipped to the side. The imp lay senseless on the ground. Jupiter looked around. More beasts ran towards them. He could not see Tamm and the others.

Jupiter picked up the webbing then lifted the imp into his arms. He couldn’t see his taruska blade.

‘Time to scarper Breeze.’

Jupiter ran along the path towards the ramp. Just inside the zenvrikan priest and Maggie stood expectant and anxious. Only seconds had passed, and yet it felt an age. The priest banged a gate closed.

‘That will stop dumb beasts.’

‘I’m not sure how stupid those hunting creatures are,’ said Jupiter. ‘But I’ll take it.’

‘What happened to Breeze?’ said Maggie. ‘How come he’s here all of a sudden?’

They jogged along the darkening tunnel in the rock. Light came from ahead but they stumbled on the shadowed floor.

‘I guess he got caught up on the Air Lord’s skyfort during the attack over Hatunqari. At least that’s when we saw him last. Somehow he must have got off the skyfort with these others.’

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The path turned and moonlight streamed in as half of the tunnel opened up so the wall had become a low barrier to the view across the lake, and the mountains beyond. The full moon had reached high in the sky, and only the barest hint of the spiked halo remained.

The priest sang then,

The lake shimmering

in qhanta’s silver gaze

Bright path through night

‘A poem for every occasion,’ said Maggie.

‘Though that one works pretty well.’ Jupiter pulled the imp closer and bent his head to the fur-feathers. The familiar musky scent set him at ease.

‘And at least we can see the way now.’ Maggie led ahead eager and excited as if she had forgotten the fighting already. She wanted to get to the portal, and find the way home.

She’s bound to be disappointed. There’s no way home. Only more fighting.

But he said nothing and pushed on, the weight of the imp grew heavier in his tired arms. A cut seeped blood from the back of his hand where the beast’s teeth had cut him. He had not noticed.

The path followed the edge of the cliff face. It curved and meandered for a hundred meters or more. Then it turned back into the cliff face. The walls rose up around on all sides and the darkness grew until only a faint glow came from behind. The tinkle of water increased and echoed as he felt the space open up. They stepped around a corner and stars winked on in the deep dark.

‘The way between worlds,’ said the priest.

Jupiter’s heart fell. ‘A glow worm cave?’ he said. ‘That’s this “way between worlds,” Really?’

He heard Maggie sob and stepped towards her. Her arms wrapped around the three of them and he felt her body shake.

The points of light seared unwinking and supernatural all around them. He had often seen glow worms in the forest back home. And had once seen the Waitomo caves in the central North Island in New Zealand. This though, took his breath away.

The light from the myriad glowing creatures bright enough to see the priest ahead of them.

‘Come. We move on,’ the zenvrikan said. The shadow moved. Jupiter followed as Maggie slipped to his side, her hand tangled in his as he carried the imp.

Around another turn in the passage, beyond the last spark of the glow worms’ pocket universe. Here the moonlight shone brighter than ever and he had to blink back in the change in light.

The rock roof of the way soared up then opened to the sky. A space had been carved from rock into a huge dome 30 meters across and 20 meters high. The center of the dome opened to the sky in a perfect circle so that a shaft of moonlight painted a circle on the flat floor.

To their left the dome opened in an arch two stories high to frame a landscape of water and sky. The moon shone above the lake bright enough now that Jupiter could see colors within the dome. A deep green vein twisted and swirled across the arch in a ring of color through the deep black rock.

‘Our sacred place,’ sang the zenvrikan.

Lake of the water

Sea of the sky

Night of the rock

Brings light of all worlds

‘This is the way. Approach,’ said the priest. ‘Look between and see.’

As Jupiter stepped out into the space he stumbled on the slope. The floor of the temple curved down and up in all directions.

‘It’s a sphere,’ he said. ‘Cut on the northern side by the arch. And at the top for the skylight.’

The flat floor at the base of the temple sphere shimmered.

‘Water.’ He looked across the surface. Spiraling lines twisted across the surface of the circular pool. ‘And its just at the level of the metal pattern.’

As he walked towards the arch the imp stirred in his arms. Maggie walked close behind.

‘Is Breeze alright?’ Maggie stroked the imp’s head. ‘His head’s bleeding.’

‘Yeah. He wore this.’ Jupiter waggled the webbing. ‘It’s a strange thing. Where’s he been? Where’d he get it?’

Jupiter lay the imp on the floor partway between the arch and the pool.

Maggie gasped. ’That’s the moon,’ said Maggie with an awed hush.

‘Yeah? So?’ Jupiter turned and looked where she pointed. Into the temple sphere where the pool reflected the moonlight. It glowed a silver white cut with the swirls, circles, and radiating lines.

Jupiter stared and walked around the edge of the temple and studied the moon pool. ‘That is the moon. Our moon. Luna.’

‘The moon’s seas,’ said Maggie. ‘They’re the same. The face of the man in the moon.’

‘How?’

The moonlight reflected in the moon pool bounced onto the curved temple wall. The image it formed could not ever be complete. A rare alignment would be needed. But he saw, in the reflection, more of what the moon from Earth looked like.

A noise erupted from the tunnel. Tamm and Berg and Zaj stumbled into the temple, fell, then rolled into the pool. The image of Luna shattered.

‘They’re coming,’ said Tamm as he picked himself up. ‘An army. Then the skyfort lifted off with the Air Lord.’

‘Is it the mountain klaeds?’ said Maggie.

‘No,’ said Berg. ‘They could not travel so far so fast. It must be Imperials. But I do not know why the Air Lord flies.’

‘Where is the priest?’ said Maggie. ‘What do we do now?’

The lowing call of a gharumal echoed around the sphere, and a chanting warble arose almost in counterpoint to the call. The zenvrikan stood at the head of the pool, their head tilted up, directed into the dome as they cried.

Jupiter looked to where the sphere’s centre would be, a point over the middle of the pool. He stepped backwards, rising as he moved into the center of the archway opening until his sight aligned through the centre with a bright point of rock on the opposite side of the temple’s sphere. It lay just above the head of the priest.

At Jupiter’s feet swirled the green vein of rock. He dropped his hand onto the smooth polished stone. It slipped across a surface that seemed almost warm to the touch.

‘Pounamu,’ he breathed.

The echoing song of the priest throbbed in his chest. The acoustics of the space so tuned that he heard the zenvrikan call within his head.

Or is it tulanvarqa?

‘I don’t understand anything.’ Maggie had slipped beside him. ‘No words. No meaning.’

‘Just feeling,’ said Jupiter.

He sensed it first as a shifting of the temple’s acoustics. Then Tamm cried in surprise.

Jupiter turned. The bow of the Air Lord’s skyfort filled the view through the arch, it obliterated the silver light from the lake as it drove straight at the center of the arch.

The zenvrikan’s cries soared higher. Jupiter heard other voices join them.

Maggie clutched at his hand.

The shimmer in the pool increased and then took form as a series of concentric rings that pulsed and steadied then shifted again. Zaj took a step towards Jupiter and Maggie, her eyes shone bright.

The imp stood up, moved to stand in front of Jupiter, and took hold of the niho taniwha pounamu pendent. In surprise Jupiter placed his hand over the imp’s. He felt his blood pulse against the zharaqsa shard that lay snug against the pendent.

‘The enemy breaks the five-fold symmetry,’ the imp said as he stared deep into Jupiter’s gaze. ‘Ehtanrashan would be no more.’

‘What?’ Jupiter looked up as confusion twisted him.

People — an imp, two humans — burst into the temple

Where a sphere of water, leapt from the pool

To hang in the air, a point of light

Cries rose close behind as the skyfort approached

Strong and determined, Maggie gripped one hand

The imp fell to ground, sprawled at his feet

Jupiter held tight to his niho taniwha

Of pounamu, mana, and zharaqsa

As it throbbed in his chest

He fell

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