Ch. 15— BONE TEMPLE

Moonthread, by Anthony Lee Phillips

“Wake up!”

It was raining.

That was the first thing Nala heard.

“Wake up!”

He was shaking her. His voice was low, and his hands were shaking her shoulders.

“Nala, now! Wake up! NALA!”

Not wanting to, she opened one eye, then the other.

“Ng?” Nala grunted. “Wh-what’s going on?”

“We have to get out of here!” Bakura whispered.

“Why? What happened?” Nala asked.

“It’s here!” he hissed, looking over his shoulder.

“What’s here?” Nala said.

Bakura whispered, but it had all the energy of a scream.

“It! The shapeshifter, or— I dunno, maybe it’s something else, but get up! We gotta get out of here! We gotta get out of here now!”

Behind Nala, she looked up at the stairs. Her eyes climbed the trails of slimy moss, up, up, up to the shattered door at the top.

It was night again. And it was raining, so… no moon. None that she could see.

She could feel it though.

mmmmmmMMMM

Bats screeched in the forest, and flitted by.

“There!” hissed Bakura.

Bakura stared wide-eyed, into the darkness, and Nala followed his gaze.

“I… don’t see it,” Nala said. “I don’t see anything. Maybe you just heard the bats?”

Bakura glared at her.

“Fine!” she said. Nala gave a frustrated sigh. “Whatever you sa—”

A shadow swept loudly.

“You hear th—?”

“Sh!”

And then another, further down the pitch black hallway.

A pair of yellow eyes saw her.

Nala’s stomach dropped. There it was. The creature.

Hhhh…

Then its eyes disappeared, and there was a third sweeping in the shadows beyond, deep in the heart of the mountain.

“What was that?” Nala said.

Bakura didn’t answer.

“Let’s get out of here,” Bakura said. He put out his hand to help Nala up off the ground.

“Yeah,” Nala finally agreed.

“But… you haven’t even slept yet,” Nala said.

“Better to be tired than dead.”

Nala looked from his hand, up to him.

“…Fair point,” Nala admitted.

She took his hand, and he helped her to her feet.

“Come on. Let’s get outta this place bef—”

HhhhhHHH!

The red wind came rushing in from—

…No, not in. It wasn’t coming from outside at all.

The wind came from behind them, from the depths of this tunneled-in building, from deep inside the mountain.

hhhhHHHHH—!

The strange wind gained in force, gushing outward. Both Nala and Bakura lost their balance and stumbled forward, face-first onto the bottom steps.

It was an eerie wind, with a will and a purpose.

HhhHHHHHHhhhhhhHHHHH!

They were only a few steps up when the wind became so powerful, they stopped.

Nala’s ring hummed, protecting her, though she didn’t know how she knew this. She felt it, as the shadowy band cooled her middle finger, then her whole hand, then her arm up to the elbow.

On their hands and knees, they watched in disbelief as the broken bits of the doors were hit by the gust. Huge splinters of wood came loose and flew outward, into the forest.

HHHH! HHHH! Hhhh…

The wind subsided.

That’s what it seemed like, at least, until the wind changed direction.

Now, the wind pulled.

The wind pulled, and it gained and it gained and it gained in its force. The wooden doors continue to splinter and crack. A trio of planks got sucked down into the stairwell, and flew toward the orclings.

Nala put out her hand, and an aura of shadow surrounded Bakura, who was a few steps ahead of her. The aura was like a shield over both of them, protecting them from all sides.

Three huge pieces of wood came flying down the stairwell.

The wind pulled them (HHHHHH) with such force, that Nala screamed and both of them covered their faces.

But when the wooden chunks hit the shadow-shield, they shattered apart.

“AH!”

HHHHHH

“Are you o—?!”

“AH! NO!”

Splinters of wood went everywhere.

“How are you—?” Bakura began to say, but one of the double doors came unhinged in the wind. It flew down the hall,

It seemed like the wind was able to go through the shadow aura, even though the wood couldn’t. Some part of Nala wondered, Why? but then the stone above them began to crack.

The red wind was like a typhoon. It gusted through her hair, and made Bakura’s cloak ripple and quiver and finally fly off of him.

“No!” he cried, reaching instinctively for the garment.

But the wind sucked the cloak into its vast darkness, and in trying to go after it, Bakura tripped.

He fell down the few stairs he had managed to climb, and stayed down on the ground ’til it was over.

The stone ceiling groaned, and cracked. The red wind screamed in the darkness.

And then the roof caved in.

HHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh… Hhhh… Hhhh…

Silence.

Hhhh…

Or something near it.

Hhhh…?

“Is it… over?” asked Bakura.

Nala let down the Shadow’s Ward.

“Yeah,” she said. “Kind of.”

“…Trapped,” said Bakura.

Nala gulped.

“Trapped,” she agreed. “Can you see anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“Me neith—”

“Shhh!” Bakura hissed.

He was right, of course. If they were in the creature’s layer, it would be listening for them.

She lifted her hand to look at it, but it was too dark. For the first time, Nala felt afraid of the dark.

She reached out to find the wall, but her hand found Bakura first. She touched his face without meaning to.

The contact gave them a flash of entanglement, a loud burst of sensations for both of them.

She recoiled. “Sorry.”

“Sorry,” he said, half a breath later.

They stood there in the darkness, awkward, stressed, trapped.

“I guess,” Nala said, “we should try to find a way out?”

“That was our way out,” Bakura’s voice said.

“Maybe there’s another way out?”

“Probably not.”

Nala tongued her sore tusk, and rubbed the ring on her finger, like she was petting the snake.

Thank you, she found herself telling the ring.

mmm, she imagined the ring was humming back.

“Mmm,” Nala grunted. “Okay. I have an idea.”

“Yeah”

“Yeah. Take my hand,” she said, reaching out for him again.

“What?” Bakura said.

“Come on, let’s find a way out of here.”

“No, I— …It’s kind of stressful whenever…”

She gave him no choice. She found his hand, and took it.

This time, when their skin touched, it was a more intense entanglement than words can describe.

But she gripped his hand in hers, and waited it out.

And soon, it was manageable. The feeling was still there, but it didn’t make Nala want to plug her ears and shut her eyes anymore.

It was just a constant, low buzzing, of his thoughts and hers, overlapping, intermingled…

Merged, Nala thought.

mmmerged, said the ring, as if it was learning a word.

You’ve done this before? thought Bakura, and she could hear his thoughts. Or…

Not hear them— she could feel the thought there. It wasn’t language, not really, not consciously language.

“More like music,” said Bakura.

“Exactly.”

Abstract.

mmm

Hhhh…

It was language in the way someone’s facial expression is sometimes like language.

It spoke like a touch speaks.

Nala reached out with her other hand, and found the wall.

She led Bakura deeper into the darkness, and both of them (or perhaps all three) were afraid of all that they might find.

* * * * / * * * *

The hallway was long, burrowing deep into the Mountain.

The walls were stone, older than dirt, but somehow still smooth. The texture of the stone was more like bone than rock, and the darkness heightened her sense of touch.

They came to a “T” in the hall.

Left or right? Nala thought.

Bakura’s mind heard it, and he shrugged. I don’t care; doesn’t matter. Left.

As they began to walk blindly down the hallway to the left, the red wind hissed again.

Hhhh…

Behind them. Pulling them. Bakura stopped.

No, he thought. Right.

Why? Nala asked, not wanting to find out where the weird wind came from.

Because, thought Bakura.

Hhhh…

Are you sure?

“…Yes,” he whispered aloud.

Before she knew it, Bakura was leading again, and pulled Nala in the direction he wanted to go.

The hall was weirdly quiet. So quiet that it hurt, as if there was sound pressure, but not the sound itself.

Weird, one of them thought.

Yeah, agreed the other.

I like this, Nala didn’t say.

And he heard it. She wondered if he had smiled too, and wished that she could see him better.

Then, she got her wish.

A sliver of soft green light emerged, far off down the hall.

“A way out!” Nala shouted. Or maybe she just said it, but it felt like she was shouting.

They sped up.

“Hey!” hissed Bakura. “Slow down! We’ve gotta be careful!”

But she didn’t listen. All she wanted to do in that moment was get to that light.

They got closer, and the light grew as they went further down the slow curve of the hall.

The walls grew further apart and higher, higher and higher, until the hall opened up into a vast open chamber.

Nala realized they were standing in…

“Some kind of Temple,” Nala muttered.

“Huh,” grunted Bakura.

There was an altar. And magic hummed everywhere. Even the shape of the chamber seemed to have been carved from unnatural means.

The room was massive, circular, and empty.

There was a hole in the ceiling, where the yellow moon peered down at them, though the shy moon hid behind heavy blue clouds.

“It stopped raining,” she said.

“For now,” said Bakura.

Hhhh…

Around the edge of the room, there were 8 other entrances, and the one they just came out of.

These entrances were spaced in a pattern, difficult to describe but easy to recognize. Three of them were huge arches, and each arch was flanked by a door on each side. No entrance was like the others, each one unique.

The altar in the center of the room was caged in a column of green light. The altar itself was made of obsidian, catching the sky like a mirror.

The green light didn’t seem to come from anywhere.

A binding light, the voice inside her said.

Bakura heard it too this time.

“Binding?” Nala wondered aloud.

Hhhh…

In that column of light, something was floating.

“What… is that?” Nala asked.

“As promised.”

Nala looked at him, but his eyes were fixed on whatever it was that floated in the air.

“You… know what that is?” said Nala.

Bakura licked his dry lips. “I do.”

He began to walk toward it.

“Wait!” Nala hissed. “Where are you going!”

Bakura didn’t say. Something about his silence made Nala feel… antsy. Anxious. Not very good.

“This place feels weird!” Nala said. “It feels like—!”

“Feels like what?”

“I dunno; it sounds stupid.”

“No, what does it feel like? Tell me.”

“Feels like we’re inside a skull!” Nala said.

She said it more loudly than she’d meant to, and now her voice echoed back at her. Most of the ceiling looked like a perfectly crafted dome, but the hole in the ceiling looked like a still-wild cave, with bumps and imbalances. The leafless trees looked like claws, and so did their roots. Huge roots ran over the edge of the pit, clawing open a door to the ceiling of this huge domed chamber.

Hhhh…

The wind pulled them again. Pulled. They looked at the column of light.

Bakura began to walk toward it again.

“Batura, please don’t—”

“My name is Bakura,” he snapped. “You don’t even know my name. You don’t know anything about me, so don’t feel like you can tell me what to do. I came for this, okay?”

“You came for—? What is this then?”

“It’s power. And choice, and… It’s nobody having to die anymore.”

“What does that even mean?”

Bakura put on his best tough face and said, “Nothing. Just wait here.”

“…Okay.”

Before he could lose his nerve, Bakura turned away from Nala and walked as fast as he could toward the light.

* * * * / * * * *

(Art by Jess Tyree.)

GIFT SHOP
1. Hats & Hoodies
2. ORC LORE— Poetry about the Gods
3. 8bit Music for Moonthread

* * * * / * * * *

(…One more chapter…)