Some minutes after the screaming had stopped Mitchell and Allora returned to the other side of the wagon. They saw Lethelin sitting cross-legged a short distance away staring out at the horizon. From the front of the wagon, the clorvol started making some unpleasant sounds that Mitchell tried to ignore. It–or she if Revos was to be believed–apparently wasn’t concerned about eating the corpse of someone who had recently been taking care of it.

He saw the body of Ivaran then. He was still tied to the wagon, but his head hung limply to one side. Both cheeks were sliced open and blood coated the whole lower portion of his face and neck. His shirt was also soaked through. Mitchell followed the blood down and saw that a mess had been made of the man’s crotch as well. If he hadn’t already thrown up, he surely would have then.

Something in him snapped. The whole ordeal seemed to hit him at once. The fight at Allora’s home in Phoenix, the magic, the severed arm he’d rolled across, their capture and imprisonment, and time in the wagon and the isolation. Being separated from everyone and everything he loved to be surrounded by magic and monsters and such casual death was too much.

“You’re all fucking insane!” His eyes were locked on the ruined body of Ivaran. He could feel his heart racing in his chest. A small voice in the back of his mind said he was having a panic attack but it was quickly drowned out by the torrent of other emotions that suddenly overwhelmed him.

Allora stopped and turned to look at him. Revos was walking toward them from the front of the wagon and behind him, he could see the clorvol raise up its head and swallow a leg.

“This is all your fault!” Mitchell pointed at Allora. “You kidnapped me, brought me to this hell hole where people are tortured to death and fed to giant lizards and where demons walk around and shoot fire from their hands!”

Lethelin got up and started walking over to see what the commotion was about. Revos stood next to Allora and they watched him impassively.

“And you, Allora–if that’s even your real name–you’re not even human. You’re the same thing he was.” Mitchell gestured without looking at the mutilated corpse. “Are you going to threaten to cut me up and feed me to the giant lizard if I don’t do what you want? Huh?

“You,” Mitchell pointed an accusing finger at Revos. “Are you going to burn me with fire if I don’t come along nicely?”

He could hear his voice rising and getting shrill but he couldn’t stop himself. The stress of the last two weeks was coming out whether he wanted it to or not.

“Sun sickness?” Lethelin asked Allora.

Allora didn’t respond. She continued to watch Mitchell, her face blank.

Mitchell turned to Lethelin. “And you, you fucking psycho. How could you do that to a person? How could you slice his face open and turn him into so much meat? What kind of sick fuck does that? Am I next?”

Lethelin’s face hardened. “You can be if you don’t watch your tongue.”

She took a step forward but Allora held out a hand stopping her. Surprisingly, she obeyed.

“What? Go ahead! Cut me open! Might as well get it over with. If you don’t, this Milandris guy is going to do it. I’m dead anyway, right?”

Allora spoke then. “Mitchell, you need to calm down. This isn’t the best time. We can explain things later, but we need to move.”

“Need to move. Need to move. Fuck that! Fuck you! No, you need to send me back home, that’s what you need to do. This is all your fault. You brought me here, you can damn well send me back.”

Mitchell began to stalk toward her, fists clenched.

“Enough,” Revos said suddenly.

His hand raised up and a wave of calm washed over Mitchell. He stumbled and almost fell. Why had he been angry? He didn’t know. Something about Allora but whatever. He felt really good now. He felt like he was drunk. But not the fall-down puke drunk, though. This was that first part where you felt happy and everything was cool. Everything was really awesome, in fact. Look how nice the sand was! And look at that dead guy! Woah, he was neat! And the dude with the horns was definitely badass. He looked like he had stepped right out of an eighties metal band’s album cover. He turned around in a slow circle, his eyes wide. And all the coyote dog heads popping up over the dunes! They were cool, too!

“Man, this place is really cool,” Mitchell said dreamily.

Allora glanced at Revos with a look of mild reproach and then walked over to where Mitchell was now staring placidly, his previous rage evaporated. She took him gently by the arm and walked him toward the back of the wagon.

“Hey, Allora,” Mitchell’s said, his voice lethargic. “Sorry about the yelling. I’ve just been a little stressed out, you know? But I’m cool now. I’m cool. We’re cool, right?”

“It is alright,” she told him. “This was not how all this was supposed to happen. You were right to be angry.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was Tall Green and Crispy. That guy was a dick. But you’re cool.”

He stopped, then looked at her as she guided him to sit on the warming sand. She sat down across from them and checked his eyes.

“He hit you with a full spell,” she said more to herself than to him. She leaned back then, apparently satisfied. “It should wear off in a little bit, you will be fine.”

“Wow, you’re really pretty, you know that? Like really really pretty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as pretty as you.”

Her face softened and she gave him a little smile.

“And the way you stabbed Dumb Fuck Two when he came to get you? That was super fucking cool. You’re like a ninja or something. And you can do magic! That’s super fucking cool, too!”

“Mitchell, we are going to break camp. We need to get away from the blood. The dakas are still staying back but the smell of blood is going to bring other things as well. Do you think you can sit here for a little bit until the spell wears off?”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” Mitchell said, giving her a smile. “I’ll sit. I can totally help though if you want. It’s cool.”

“Just sit. I will come and get you when it is time to leave.”

“Cool,” Mitchell said.

She stood and walked back towards Revos and Lethelin, who were watching him. Mitchell only had eyes for Allora’s ass in those jeans, though.

“Man, her ass is cool.”

A little while later Mitchell started to feel his euphoria slip away. He was counting coyote dog heads as they popped up over the sand dunes and seeing if he could tell them apart and thinking how cool they were when suddenly everything stopped being pleasant. He blinked a few times, shook his head as if clearing away the fog, and turned to look back at the wagon. Revos and Lethelin were throwing the cages into the sand behind the wagon.

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"That son of a bitch put a spell on me," Mitchell thought.

Then he remembered how he was acting and felt embarrassment wash over him. It was exactly like the feeling he would get the morning after drunk-dialing an ex. As he replayed the whole scene in his head he realized he was still angry. Really fucking angry, actually. But he wasn’t going nuts like before. He was back in control of himself.

He let out a frustrated sigh and got to his feet. The sun was fully up now and he squinted against the glare as he walked to the back of the wagon. Lethelin and Revos were just dumping the second cage into the sand. They paused in their efforts and watched him as he approached.

“Look, I’m sorry about what I said. To both of you.”

Neither said anything.

“It’s been a rough couple of weeks and this place is nothing like where I came from.” He turned his attention fully on Lethelin. “And I don’t know what happened between that guy and your mother but I think I can guess.”

Lethelin blinked and looked away.

“If someone did something like that to my mother, I’d want to kill them, too. I probably would have just shot them, but, well, that’s not really my business.”

She looked back at him then and gave a small nod. “Thank you for the apology.”

“Are we alright?”

“We’re alright, Mitchell Allen from Earth.”

Mitchell looked to Revos then. “Are we cool?”

Revos waved his concern away. “It’s fine. In truth, I do share some of the blame for your current situation, so your anger is understandable.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s time for that discussion after we’ve left the scent of blood behind. If you come up here and help with the last cage, and the prisoner block, I’ll help Allora pack up the rest of our gear.”

“Yeah, sure.”

They swapped places and Mitchell helped Lethelin move the last of the cages off the wagon. The prisoner block, as Revos had called it, was the stone with the chains attached to it that they were hooked to each night. Mitchell asked how it worked, why it was light enough that he could lift it easily here, but when they were chained to the block it got heavier. Lethelin said that she wasn’t even a sprite so she couldn’t begin to explain the basics of the magic involved. However, with each new prisoner attached to it, it increased in weight by the same weight as that of the prisoner. Mitchell wanted to ask what a sprite was, but there was other work to be done.

Everyone moved with quiet efficiency as they tried to get underway as soon as possible. Both Allora and Revos had to fire off a few bolts of some sort of magical attack into the dunes to keep the coyote d–no, Mitchell corrected himself, Allora had called them dakas–away from the wagon. Revos said they were primarily nocturnal hunters but the smell of all the blood was driving them into a frenzy. Individually they were small and weak, but a pack of ten or twelve could take down a well-armored man. Beyond that, there were bigger things that would be drawn to the smell.

Before long the wagon was moving. They hadn’t even crested the next rise when Mitchell saw the dakas swarm over the dune behind them going for the body of Ivaran and the other corpse. There were at least three dozen of them and a fight broke out almost immediately as they descended upon their meal. The clorvol didn’t seem disturbed in the slightest and plodded resolutely forward under the guidance of Revos at the reins.

Allora and Lethelin rode in the back with Mitchell and no one spoke. Mitchell was still angry at Allora but he had control of his temper. He hadn’t apologized to her for his outburst and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. There was still a lot they had to talk about and Mitchell thought if he started talking now he’d just blow up again. She was laying back resting her head on a thin blanket that they’d taken from the dead men’s things and looked to be napping. Lethelin looked out at the dunes as the wagon rolled onward.

Mitchell, rather tired of days spent not speaking, decided to try and take advantage of his new ability to talk. Revos had cast the language spell on him twice more and it seemed to last about an hour, give or take.

“So what does your name mean?”

Lethelin turned her emerald green eyes from the landscape and looked at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Revos and Allora both seemed to think your name was funny. I figured there was a story behind it.”

“There is. A famous one, actually. My mother was always a bit of a dreamer and a romantic and I think that’s why she picked the name. I hated it when I was a kid. Especially because I can’t dance to save my life.”

She smiled inwardly at some memory.

“What’s the story?”

“It’s a mythological tale about a woman named Lethelin who was loved by both Vish and Ithstasy. Do you know about them?”

“The moons?”

“Not just moons, but also the children of the god Stollar, the god of the day and life, and Denass, his wife, the goddess of night and death.”

She paused, seeing if he understood. He nodded for her to continue.

“Lethelin loved to dance. The story goes that she would sneak out of her home after bedtime to dance in the fields around her father’s farm. It was said that she could charm the wild beasts with her movements and that music would sometimes follow her so that she might dance in rhythm. It wasn’t long before her activities were noticed first by Ithstasy and then by Vish as she danced under their light. Nights were longer when she danced because they would stay in the sky longer trying to see her. They were enraptured by her.

“As she got older, she also became an unparalleled beauty. She was said to be the kindest and most generous person in all the three kingdoms. All loved her but Ithstasy and Vish most of all for they had been witness again and again to her true beauty.”

“She sounds like a Disney princess,” Mitchell said with a chuckle.

“Are they a powerful royal dynasty where you’re from?”

“I guess you could kind of say that,” he said with a small grin. “Sorry, continue. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Lethelin shrugged. “One day, unable to contain their feelings anymore, Ithstasy and Vish left the heavens and came to Lethelin’s home. They professed their love for her and, Lethelin, overcome by their divine presence, fell in love with them as well. Every night Ithstasy would visit her after sunset and Vish would visit her before dawn and they would consummate their love.

“Wait wait,” Mitchell held a hand up. “So she was sleeping with both of them? The brother and the sister?”

“She was,” Lethelin said with a grin. “Her sexual appetites were said to be as vigorous as her dancing.”

“Kinky,” Mitchell said. “So what happened?”

“She got older, as all the mortals do. She never married, despite having offers from all over the three kingdoms. She stayed devoted to Ithstasy and Vish. But the years passed and her body weakened. The two divines became distraught at her impending death and pleaded with their mother to allow her soul to remain in her body and to restore her youthful form. Denass refused. She didn’t have the power to make a mortal immortal and, even if she did, she would not. It would disturb the natural order.

“Her children then went to their father, Stollar, and begged him to grant Lethelin immortality so that she could join them in the heavens, but he also refused. He said that Lethelin was a mortal and had a mortal’s destiny, part of which was to die. He would not change that. So Vish and Ithstasy returned defeated to sit by Lethelin’s side as she weakened. It was called the Moonless Season. For three months, they sat vigil as her body withered until she finally died and joined the other humans in the Greenwood.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the place where our souls go when we die. Assuming we have not angered the gods. Then the Darkness awaits. Isolation for all eternity. Cut off from the souls of the other races.”

“So that’s it?”

“Not quite,” Allora spoke up from where she was lying on the wagon, not sleeping after all. “There is a little more. A sort of happy ending.”

Lethelin nodded her head.

“Denass, seeing the grief of her children at the loss of their mortal love, allowed a small reprieve. As Lethelin was not an immortal, she was not granted a permanent place in the heavens. But every hundred years, she releases Lethelin’s spirit to dance for her children once more. And so she does. Lethelin dances for three nights before she returns to the Greenwood. The last time was about twenty years ago.”

“Twenty two,” Lethelin corrected.

“Wait, so it’s a true story?”

Lethelin shrugged. “Who can say for sure? But every hundred years a comet appears on the horizon and does an analemma around the two moons. It’s visible in the sky for three days and then disappears again. No one sees it coming or going. It makes three passes around the moons and then is gone.”

“It’s said that children conceived in the moonlight of Lethelin’s visit grow up to have unique talents,” Allora added.

“What’s an analemma?” Mitchell asked.

Lethelin drew a shape in the air with her finger tracing the path that the comet took. Mitchell recognized it immediately.

“Oh, it’s a figure eight! That’s wild.”

“Eight what?” Lethelin asked, her face puzzled.

“No, it’s… Never mind. I get it.”

The wagon pressed on for the next few hours and then they were forced to stop. The sun was approaching midday and, just as when they’d been captives, they broke to rest the clorvol and make camp. Rather than the lean-to this time, they got the bigger tent that Ivaran and his men had been using. It wasn’t cooler than their lean-to, but it was more spacious. And it had some sort of minor enchantment on it that kept bugs away, even the little sand fleas that had been a nuisance ever since they started out. As the poles were driven into the sand Mitchell saw all the little tiny bugs erupt out of the sand and scamper for the fastest way outside of the perimeter of the tent. If he could sell these back home he’d make a fortune.

All throughout the ride and setting up camp, Mitchell and Allora hadn’t spoken. Both of them knew there were things to say and, if she didn’t broach the subject, he would. She said they would talk after they’d moved off a bit and he was giving her time to keep her word. As they brought out some of the dried provisions and settled in to wait for the cooler temperatures that sunset would bring, she renewed the language spell and began to talk.

“Mitchell, I promised you answers and I think it’s time. You need to know what’s going on before we continue.”