Piling up on the sky’s vault, black clouds, full of heavy rains and catchy winds, were quickly moving in the heights, heading toward a sure target: the Northern part of Kiago Forest, through which Fenrir and the rest of his group decided to cross, heading toward the Rophion Forest.
Looking at that crowd of clouds in the sky, Fenrir, who was sitting on a log, knocked down by the storm, looked in the distance, for even if the forest seemed thick enough in that part where they were, nothing remained hidden from the wolf’s sharp eyes.
And, catching Fenrir’s glance, Arion looked in the same direction and he has been also troubled, making the rest become troubled too, for they saw Fenrir’s and Arion’s glances staring at the sky. Thus, soon after, the rumor among the People of Siar started: „what’s going on? Why do they stare at the sky? Why is glooming so suddenly even if isn’t it noon yet?” Some of them were whispering while the others started to suddenly rube their palms and the skin of their arms, feeling a sudden chill. „It’s getting cold. Much colder than the normal of this period of the year,” they murmured.
Hearing the people’s whispers, Samaya and Bestla got closer to Fenrir and Arion, who kept staring at the sky, saying nothing. „What’s going on?” asked Samaya, being only one step from them.
„Look over there,” murmured Fenrir. „Am I the only one that feels strange seeing this or those clouds aren’t controlled by Sephir and by Boor?”
„No, it’s not only your feeling. It’s so, for if those clouds had been controlled by Sephir and Boor, we would have seen Palar among them. But no matter how hard I didn’t try to see him, I couldn’t,” said Samaya.
„That’s already weird. And how neither Sephir nor my father nor my grandfather are here, it’ll be a little bit difficult to find out what’s going on,” said Bestla miffed, for when Sephir followed her father and left Bestla behind her, the girl felt as if being left adrift.
At that moment instead, seeing that celestial danger approaching them, she understood that not for nothing Sephir decided to leave her there. But… how she couldn’t control the winds or the rains, or at least she hadn’t that strong power her sister and her father had to control the celestial madness, Bestla felt powerless and, even if she wanted so badly to use her power and create new worlds, just to fence them all, she knew well that maybe she won’t make it eventually.
Especially she became frightened when Samaya focused her glance on her and saw her playing with a gelatinous cube and multiple mirrors appeared all over there. But those mirrors were reflecting not only the sky as she wished at first, but also nature all over them was reflected on those mirrors.
„Bestla, stop it!” Samaya demanded her in a severe tone. „We don’t know what’s approaching us or what kind of power he or she has. That’s why, until we know this, it’s better to keep our powers hidden from the intruder.”
„I agree with Samaya. It’s better to hedge, till the intruder passes by us,” added Fenrir, much worried this time, seeing the speed of the clouds to gloom the sky, chasing the light away, and more because he couldn’t see who or what was behind that unusual phenomenon.
„Let’s find out then!” Arion confidently said when Nathaniel and Mago approached them.
„How?” Fenrir inquired.
„Let’s pay a social visit to those mad clouds,” said Arion and, suddenly jerking in the air, he turned into that beautiful winged horse, white like pure snow.
Fenrir didn’t wait for a second invitation. So, as he was used to riding on Arion’s back without reins, he jumped on the horse’s back at the moment Arion made the last circle around them. After that, the horse flapped hard from its strong wings and raised in the air till they got above the forest.
„If you already formed those mirrors, let’s at least take advantage of them,” said Samaya, after she had stared both at the sky and at the mirrors for minutes in a row, which suddenly started to vanish one by one at Bestla’s command, who was nervously modeling that blue gelatine in her hand.
„First form them, then make them vanish. Decide once and for all what will be better,” said Bestla, huffy. After that, she threw the cube toward those 10 mirrors that were still seen floating in the air.
The bottom of the cube still remained stuck on Bestla’s palm while its upper face formed a big rounded mirror, the size and the form of a springboard for children, which floated in the air, about 20 meters above their heads.
„Can you raise it higher?” asked Samaya, staring at the sky.
„I can try, but, to support it, I need more mirrors around it.”
„And… how is it supposed us to move something created by you, Bestla?” Asked Samaya, making a wry face. „Yes, I have magic powers, but… I can’t compare myself with you.”
„It’s said that the pupil should exceed his master. But it seems that I’ve wasted my time with you,” murmured Bestla, reproachfully shaking her head.
„I can try,” said Yellen, who was only a few steps behind them.
Bestla turned her head and looked askance at the girl, for even if she and Yellen reached a compromise since they met each other, yet, the fact that the girl was a Yātrīkar was something that Bestla disliked. Yet, she had to admit that, being a Yātrīkar, Yellen could hide huge powers inside her, powers that neither she nor Samaya could discover in the girl. Especially with the Clock’s needles that chose Yellen as their new master.
„Hm, let’s try, if you say you can,” murmured Bestla in a half a voice, seeing Samaya’s and Yellen’s glances focused on her.
„I still consider that’s risky,” Nathaniel eventually said. „We know very well that Tenebre and her army are looking for Yellen because she’s a Yātrīkar. Using your power now, you can reveal yourself in front of the enemy. Don’t you think so too?” He asked the three girls.
„But I can try to…,” Yellen tried to oppose Nathaniel’s idea.
„I must agree with Nathaniel this time,” said Samaya.
But Bestla found that answer too obvious. So, she murmured, muffed: „I hate the fact that you two agree on almost everything lately. Something damn suspicious in my opinion. And… will you keep me staying like this for long? Not the other, but I can’t keep that mirror floating in the air without support for longer. I’m not Atlas, by the way.”
„Then let the pupil show the „master” what he learned from him,” Samaya teased her and, approaching that springboard mirror, Samaya also formed, above her right palm, a cube, similar to the one seen on Bestla’s palm. But that cube, formed on Samaya’s palm, had a solid form and seemed as if swallowing the light around it inside its body.
Namely that absorption process, of those blind rays of light, that were reflected on the walls of those 10 mirrors, which were floating in the air, changed their position and, from having a 45 degrees angle, Samaya managed to lay them at 90 degrees, completely surrounding that springboard with the mirrors.
Then, when the mirrors looked as if stuck on the lateral sides of the springboard, the light reflected on their surface formed a kind of glassy peel on the springboard and it threw back thus, above that horizontal mirror, a kind of air current, that was spinning in slow circles at about 30 centimeters above the round mirror.
„It works!” Samaya happily shouted.
Bestla instead, even if, deep inside her, was happy that Samaya finally learned her trick, preferred not to openly show it yet and she just murmured: „the beginner’s luck,” as she generally used to do.
Nathaniel and Mago, who understood Bestla’s trick, only exchanged glances and smiled. Then, they moved away from the girls and headed toward the others to calmly watch what Bestla and Samaya intended to do with those mirrors. And while walking toward theirs, Nathaniel put an arm on Yellen’s shoulders, trying to make her follow him. But the girl made a stand against that idea and stood in the same place, staring at how Bestla and Samaya were using their powers, for she was sure that she could do the same, but nobody believed her.
Yet, at the moment the air currents raised up-up in the air, above that horizontal mirror, reflecting the slow movement of the lateral ones and increasing in volume in a kind of spiral form thus, Yellen’s eyes suddenly got a shiny shade, almost white, while her hands stretched in front, palms facing up, forming similar air currents like those seen above the horizontal mirror above her palms too.
„What is she doing?” Bestla shouted to Samaya when she noticed Yellen. But… because both of them were involved in that creation process, none of them could approach Yellen and make her react.
Narrowing her eyes, Samaya analyzed Yellen’s movement from closer and she saw how the girl’s eyes suddenly became normal again, even if she kept controlling those air currents above her palms. „How did you do that?” Samaya asked in amazement, realizing that Yellen came back to her senses by herself.
„I don’t know. I don’t remember,” Yellen said, frightened, for she really didn’t remember what happened to her only a few moments ago while she has been in that trance. Now instead, when she saw herself controlling those air currents seen above her palms, she became really scared, for she felt weird as if those currents had crossed her body too.
„The loupe!” Samaya suddenly murmured when she remembered, like in a sudden dream, about that loupe seen at Gaea’s waist, which she seemed to have seen reflected in the Fountain of Truth, then, when she accompanied Chaos in the Desert of Oblivion and Yggdrasil revealed her part of the future.
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„What?!” Bestla shouted when heard Samaya saying something, but she didn’t understand what she said.
„Nothing,” Samaya hurried up to change the subject. „Let’s focus on what we were doing,” and, soon, the power of the three made those air currents raise a few dozen meters above the ground, getting up-up above the forest, and having the same spiral form.
And, even if it didn’t look so at first, the one who also influenced that process to be successful has been also Yellen, who managed to control all those currents only with her left hand while she put her right hand above them, like a lid, to later position them horizontally and clearly see how small arrows were circulating in a spiral, forming the currents.
Thus, the surface of the spiral got much above the forest, managing to somehow „absorb” the images from above and, quickly passing them through the thin body of the spiral, as if descending on a slide, the same images have been reflected first on the horizontal mirror to be later seen on the lateral ones too.
„Great Lord!” murmured Mago when he turned his head toward the girls and he saw the anger of the clouds covering the sky with a cloth of pitch. His remark made the others look in the same direction and, all as one looked afraid at what was happening above them.
Also on the mirrors’surface, Samaya and Bestla saw Fenrir and Arion jerking among the trees and raising above the forest again, for, the first time when they got up, the sky suddenly cracked and, not to be noticed, Arion decided to hedge for a short while. That time instead, when the sky „calmed down a little bit,” out of the thunderlights’influence, leaving only the madness of the clouds above to chase the light away, the two decided to attempt once again to see what was going on above.
But… when they got to float right above the crowns of the trees, Arion finally noticed that energy spiral created by the girls and he decided that they’ll be safer inside of those currents. But they eventually only hid behind that spiral.
Thus, sheltered, the two stared at that stud of mad clouds approaching them, and, soon, they understood that those clouds weren’t definitely controlled by Sephir or Boor.
„Even if I have the feeling that here’s Ian Gyar’s madness, yet, something tells me that’s more than this,” said Fenrir.
„I agree with you, for the clouds from that part of the sky that is still illuminated by the sun look scared as we are, but none of them can tell me who’s approaching us. Only that that person has Ian Gyar’s face.”
A black arrow suddenly pierced the vault of that deep night that was taking over the surroundings while a heavy rain started to pour from the heights. And… even if that arrow seemed to lose the battle with the madness of nature at first, Fenrir noticed soon that the arrow changed its course and was heading straight toward them.
„It’s Argol! That arrow that’s approaching us is Argol, Arion,” Fenrir shouted, slowly tapping on the back of the horse.
„I hear you. There’s no need to make me also feel it,” the horse reproachfully said, for he had felt one of those taps very well on his back.
„Oh, I make a pardon!” Fenrir cheerfully said and he stretched his left arm in front, waiting for something.
A few moments later, Argol left itself „fall” from the heights and sat down on the young man’s arm, squeezing it a little with his claws not to lose its balance. Then, the eagle opened his beak several times, making a strange sound, which made Fenrir approach his ear of Argol’s head, for it was really difficult for him to understand what Argol tried to tell him because of the thunderbolts and the roar heard due to the girls’spiral.
But even so, after a few moments of listening, Fenrir suddenly turned his head and looked in the same direction where Argol had come from. And Fenrir did this at the same moment Arion, the horse, widely opened his wings, seeing a black horse appearing in front of those black clouds, and, on the back of that horse, they saw a ghost person, who they have never seen before. Then, both he and Fenrir saw the two panthers running on both sides of that horse.
„Maranam!” Arion and Fenrir murmured at the same time. „To the shelter!” Fenrir shouted from the heights, but he was too high to be heard by someone.
But at the moment she saw Arion, the horse, descending with an impressive speed from the heights, Samaya understood that someone dangerous is approaching. More, after seeing Argol on Fenrir’s arm, and, being aware that that eagle was almost never leaving the bald top of the Mount of Fear. That’s why, Samaya worriedly looked in the mirror and read, on her brother’s lips, who kept yelling, „Maranam! Run!”
Dropping the cube from her hand and suddenly turning toward the others, she made desperate signs with her arms to shelter.
Then, seeing the madness and the tumble caused by Samaya’s shouts, the signs made by her, and the cube which fell to the ground and made a deafening sound around, making the humans feel well the cube’s impact with the soil as if a kind of radiance area surrounded them, whose impact also knocked the mirrors to the ground, they could finally get off the ground and run toward that clump of trees, fallen to the ground, seen not that far from them.
Getting next to Nathaniel and Mago - Samaya, Bestla, and Yellen also hid behind the trunk of an extremely thick tree and looked toward the place, where the mirrors floated in the air not long ago. Thus, they could see how Samaya’s cube, swallowed back its energy, the same energy that it spread all over, and also hungrily swallowed the mirrors, turning them back into the same gelatinous form, which they had been formed from.
And, at the moment the cube turned back into a wooden cube only, apparently worthless at a first glance, Arion, the horse, has been seen flying close to the ground and quickly heading toward the same place the others were hiding. Also, at that moment, Argol broke away from Fenrir’s arm and jerked in the air. Then, the eagle approached the cube, grabbed it in its claws, and soared as an arrow toward Samaya, sitting on her arm, and dropping the cube on the girl’s lap.
Then, they saw Fenrir and Arion running toward them as quickly as they could, for, once touching the ground, Arion took back his human shape, for, being a horse, he wouldn't have been able to hide. More: with that bank of mad clouds, that have been seen at first only in the sky, but which have been later seen surrounding the forest like a thick smoke or fog, moved from behind by unseen energy, it was really dangerous to stay in place.
That's why, Fenrir and Arion practically jumped behind another thick trunk that was laying on the ground not that far from the one behind which Samaya, Bestla, Yellen, Nathaniel, and Mago were hiding. And only when they were also sheltered, did Arion turn toward the others and demanded them in a shout: „enter behind the trunks if you can or turn yourselves in the same ground if you can, but hold something tightly and nobody should even breathe till the smoke passes if you want to live.”
At first, nobody understood what Arion meant. They only looked around, with wide-open mouths and eyes, scared and frightened of what they were seeing approaching them. But they followed Fenrir and Arion’s example soon when they saw how quickly they started to dig the earth under that trunk, to enter later in that off-handed hole and grasping with their arms and with the legs from the thick branches, almost wrapping themselves around them, just to keep the balance while the danger passes by.
Then, suddenly, all over them, it turned to be extremely silent. But none of those who were hidden behind the trunks dared to exit their hide-out just to look around. And they did well, for, very soon after that, the noise of hooves, hardly hitting the ground in the horse’s gallop, has been heard approaching them, and later weird roars coming out of those smoky clouds have been also heard.
But, the wolf is the wolf: even if he knew that he mustn’t do that, Fenrir slowly bent and looked in front: thus, he saw the black hooves of Maranam’s horse at first, approaching that place, where they were, at a full speed. Then, Fenrir dared to raise his glance from off Maranam’s shoes and move it up, on his body, till he got to the shoulders, and he saw that Maranam wore a black, long cloak and that he was hooded - a hood that was covering half of his face. But yet… Fenrir saw his black eyes that suddenly started to burn at the moment Fenrir focused his glance on them.
And, as if feeling Fenrir lurking on him, Maranam suddenly stopped the horse, making the animal’s hooves slightly slipper on the wet ground, and his movement also forced the panthers to stop, listening to their master’s command. Thus, after he stopped the horse, Maranam focused his glance on the place Fenrir was hiding. But Maranam’s glance had been suddenly blurred by the same smoke that caught up with him and hid the surroundings for a short period of time.
Thus, at the moment that smoky cloud dispersed, leaving only a dusk light behind it, a weak light, that barely allowed to be seen around, Maranam has been seen pulling the reins of the horse and slowly heading toward the place where Fenrir and the others were.
Yet… it was weird, for he didn't feel the same energy of someone strong as he felt at the moment he decided to stop the horse, and this drove him crazy, making him roar, for that energy, which he felt before, was something he knew well, of someone he knew before and who he had defeated long ago, thinking that he was dead.
But… Maranam lost the scent of that bond between him and the stranger due to Samaya, who teleported herself next to her brother at the moment she felt that Fenrir’s curiosity could bring that Unwished Pilgrim next to them. So, being already next to him, Samaya covered his eyes, whispering in his ear with her telepathic voice: „don’t leave him to feel you, Fenrir. I don’t know why, but I have the feeling that he’s looking for you.”
Then, suddenly, Samaya started to slip, for she was holding that trunk only with an arm, which she wrapped around a thick branch when she teleported there.
Thus, when he felt that she was losing her balance, without opening his eyes because he decided to listen to his sister’s advice not to endanger the others, Fenrir stretched his arm and wrapped it around Samaya’s waist, holding her tightly to his body.
And, when she felt that she was out of danger, Samaya closed her eyes and entered her own twilight world, having Jar’s form at that moment. Thus, looking at him, she saw Maranam carefully looking around. But he couldn’t see anything, for that place was surrounded by a kind of red magma, a red air seen only by Jar.
Thus, following the trace of that magma, Jar saw that it was leading toward Fenrir. But he wasn’t hidden behind that trunk like the man Fenrir, but like that black wolf whose reflection has been seen by Dike in that screen of flames and which showed up in Obregon’s dreams, from time to time.
„Who is this…?” Jar’s lips murmured. But he suddenly kept silent, feeling Maranam’s movement, who suddenly pulled the reins, forcing the horse to turn back to the main road, to spur the animal later, and gallop away, understanding that he won’t see that night who’s the source of that strange energy which he felt earlier.
The panthers followed Maranam right away. But, before that, Kurūcim looked for a few moments toward Jar, as if feeling his presence there.
And, when Maranam and the panthers finally disappeared at the horizon, Jar turned back to the real world. But who was standing this time, on the same main road on which their enemies vanished, was Samaya as if she teleported through space and time, even if she stood next to Fenrir not long ago.
Thus, feeling his arm released and hearing the flap of Argol’s wings, which raised in the air and approached Samaya, Fenrir opened his eyes and carefully looked around. So, seeing that the place was safe, even if sunken into darkness, he left his hide-out and told the others to do the same.
Thus, one by one, Nathaniel’s men left their hide-outs and approached the twins, that were standing in the middle of the road at that moment, staring toward the horizon where Maranam and the panthers vanished eventually.
„Even if I knew that the beginning of this war is close, I never thought that I’ll see Maranam’s face one day,” murmured Arion.
„Did you also see him?!” Fenrir asked in amazement, and Arion nodded yes right away. „But yet, Samaya, why did you say that I’m the one he’s looking for?”
Without watching him, Samaya said: „because you also have, like me, another Spirit living inside you - the black wolf, the one who protected us from Maranam, hiding this place by surrounding it with a hot red magma.”
Samaya’s answer amazed the others, but not Fenrir: „did you know this?” Arion suddenly asked.
„At least, I’ve suspected it,” murmured Fenrir. „I saw him once, being only a child when I met Baradar in the forest. But… I don’t know who that spirit might be.”
„We’ll find out when we’ll meet Maranam,” Samaya confidently said, „and if we don’t want to meet our death today, it’ll be a damn good idea to hurry up and leave this place, for Maranam can turn back and I don’t think that the same trick we used before can save us for the second time.” After that, Samaya headed toward the place where they had stood hidden, closely followed by the others. And... soon after, everybody was far deep in the forest.