by Des Pensable
‘Yes, I think you’re right. Miranda could even be there. It seems that Astaria holds the answers to a few questions and like it or not I’m going to have to return but not yet. I have a few things to do first.’
‘By the way did you tell Miranda that you were on my Llanllean body before you were on her body?’ asked Aquitain out of curiosity.
‘Of course I can’t keep any secrets from the mistress.’ replied Slivver innocently. ‘I told her all about your exploits with the Llanlleans in the cave.’
‘And what did she say?’ queried Aquitain.
‘She said that you will make a wonderful king one day and I agree. I can’t wait to be there on your joining night it will be an epic event.’ said Slivver excitedly.
Aquitain laughed loudly.
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath – that’s likely to be a long way off yet.’
Chapter 2 Glammer’s Secret
Aquitain sat considering the huge task ahead. He shifted back to Miranda’s shape to conserve his source. The problems seemed to be increasing and getting tougher every day. He began to have a few doubts about how this whole adventure was going to turn out.
All he had set out to do a couple of weeks ago was to find Miranda, his cousin Melanie and his memcrystal Alpha. Now was he supposed to be an Agent of Chaos. He had to change the world. People needed him to save them and their world. It was such a big job. What if he failed? People would suffer and he would be responsible. He felt scared. Suddenly he burst into tears.
‘Why me?’ he thought. ‘Why are they doing this to me?’ and he cried his heart out while imagining what his Grandfather might say.
‘Look what a few minutes in a female body has done to you. You’ve turned into a blubbering schoolgirl. Is it all too hard for you? Do you want to leave it to someone else who can do the job? Why not just go play with your magical toys.’
After a couple of minutes he felt a small raspy tongue licking his face.
‘Don’t cry My Lady, there’s always hope while you still have friends and I’ll be your friend.’
‘Thank you Rat Catcher, you’re right. I have got friends and together we’ll do our best to save this world and our own.’
He cuddled the cat with his eyes closed revelling in the soothing feeling of its lovely warm furry body. Eventually, he looked up, tears still slowly running down his face and saw Glammer hovering in the air an arm’s length from him looking on rather thoughtfully.
‘I think you are better as a Newman female. I didn’t think you had any emotions before. Why are you in Miranda’s body?’
Aquitain mentally chanted a calming mantra and thought. ‘By the Powers it’s great to really feel Newman again but I’ll have to take care with the emotional side of this female body. Now back to the business at hand.’
He stood up placing the cat back on the ground.
‘It sounds like you must have missed the excitement at the ball.’ he said.
‘No I witnessed it all. You have upset the balance as the Mudrun Collective had hoped. Your actions over the next few days are critical in how it re-establishes itself and may set the balance for many years to come. I was called away and specifically commanded not to help you in any way.’ she replied.
‘I had a good chance to think about Moonmist problems before the ball and in particular where you fit in. I came to the conclusion that you are a part of the problem. You have been stealing secrets from people’s minds and blocking off memories that you think they should forget. You may think that you are helping them but you leave them incapable of making changes to help themselves and others.’
‘Mudrun made me its Warden because it feared what was happening but could do little to stop it. Before you said you were sent by the Collective to help me but now when things are critical you are now instructed not to help me. I don’t believe that. You are supposed to be neutral yet by stopping the Elendari from helping themselves you are not acting neutral but preventing change. Change is necessary for people to adapt to changes in the world they live in. I think that you have upset the balance and are worried that I may be able to restore it.’
‘No we are not the problem.’ said Glammer.
‘Quiet! say nothing.’
‘No! we have kept quiet too long.’
‘She is right we are the problem.’
‘Stop it you will destroy us all.’
‘No! we must tell her.’
Glammer began writhing as if struggling internally with some great problem. She then began violently flashing a multitude of colours and her body shape melted into an amorphous mass then suddenly exploded in a rainbow of colour.
The Rat Catcher ran for cover and Aquitain dived for the floor as a reflex expecting a huge release of energy but there was none. As he stood up again he noticed a huge cloud of moth radiants in the room fluttering around all arguing with each other using mindspeak.
‘What just happened?’ he asked but they were all too busy arguing to answer him.
He stepped back a few paces to get a better view. The cloud of mothra was made up of an equal number of four types each with a different coloured body and each glowing with a related colour. There were browns, blues, reds and greens. The brown one glowed yellow and the others the colour of their body, red for red and so on. On closer examination they all seemed to be arguing with each other in tiny squeaky voices.
‘Stop arguing!’ he shouted. ‘Separate now or I will be tempted to punish you.’
They all stopped arguing, looked at Aquitain and separated into four clouds based upon their body colour and began blinking in the same way that Aquitain had observed during the ball.
‘Oh damn.’ thought Aquitain. ‘I’ve done it now, the little beggars want to fight me.’
Moments later beams of heat, cold, acid and electric energy shot out of the groups at Aquitain’s chest. His heart almost stopped as he mentally readied to block the pain but none came. It would be difficult to determine who was the more surprised Aquitain or the mothra. Aquitain looked down, it was the armour. He was still wearing Miranda’s brilliant armour. It was absorbing the different types of energy attack.
‘Are you finished? Now that you all know that you cannot harm me I wish to talk to you.’
They ignored him and all began pulsing in synchrony and the air began cracking with energy.
‘This doesn’t look good.’ thought Aquitain, ‘They’re going to do something much more powerful.’
Quickly he sent a mental blast in the direction of two of the groups and immediately most of the members of the two groups went rigid and fell to the floor. Normally Aquitain didn’t use mental blasts as they required considerable magic essence but with his larger source it was now a useful weapon for incapacitating people without harming them.
He then pointed at the remainder and said
‘Stop that pulsing immediately. I am the Warden of Mudrun. You will obey me and answer my questions.’
They stopped pulsing.
‘You are our Warden! Oh what were we thinking? Please Lady had we known we would not have harmed you. It’s just we are confused. Our knowledge and memories are scattered between all of us. Unless we are together we can tell you nothing and since you have killed half of us all our knowledge is lost.’
‘I have not killed anyone.’ replied Aquitain. ‘I was forced to stun some of you to stop you all from harming yourselves. They will recover in a minute or two. Now tell me can you reform back to the single one called Glammer?’
‘It has only ever been done once. We were formed into Glammer by the elemental dragon Granite hundreds of years ago,’ said the collective mind of the blues.
‘Do you know how he did it?’ he asked hopefully.
‘He chose twenty five of each of the colours to represent each of the elements. We then danced the Dance of the Elements and we were joined.’
‘What normally happens during the Dance of the Elements?’ said Aquitain.
‘We do not know.’ replied the
collective. ‘We are entranced by the music.’
‘How do you start the dance?’
‘Someone must first play the music then we dance.’
‘Did they do the Dance of the Elements when I was chosen to be Warden of Moonmist?’
‘Yes. Yes. That was the Dance of the Elements.’ replied the collective.’
Aquitain closed his eyes and tried to visualize the amazing sight that had occurred when he had been made Warden only a few days ago. There had been hundreds of mothra present then. The power generated had been immense and the display awe inspiring. Would it be possible to repeat such a dance? It had to be. Glammer held many secrets and to get her back she must be remade.
Slowly the effect of the mind blast on the stunned mothra wore off and they fluttered up forming a cloud muttering amongst themselves.
Aquitain stood pondering on how Granite might have formed Glammer. He knew how to make a new body for himself using the first divinity seed. He now knew how to tie a spirit to a body using the second divinity seed but the knowledge of how to make a hundred little bodies merge and form into one larger body he was unsure about. He needed time to think about it.
After several minutes of thought he decided that there must be both a body as well as energy transformation occurring during the Dance of the Elements. These little mothra could alter the type of energy that they used. He had seen it at the ball. One moment their bodies generated and used heat energy then seconds later they switched to lightning energy. That was unprecedented. That would require changes in their bodies and there was a way to find out.
‘I want one of you of each colour to come closer so that I can see you better.’ said Aquitain.
No one came forward.
‘I’m not going to eat you. I’m trying to work out a way to put you back together. You do want to be remade into one again don’t you?’
‘You can’t do that. You wouldn’t know how.’ said the collective of the reds with a haughty tone.
‘And how do you know that?’ asked Aquitain.
‘He told us you hardly had any power and you turned into animals all the time to hide as you were scared of him.’
‘Granite said that to you recently?’
‘No silly the Dark One did. We share our secrets with him and he tells us where to find more.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to find out secrets for Granite?’ asked Aquitain.
‘Yes but he hasn’t been around for ages. The Dark One knows lots of secrets and tells us where to find more.’ replied the reds.
‘He tells us where to find more secrets than you.’ said the blues suddenly. ‘No we hear more secrets.’ yelled the browns.
‘How does he tell some of you secrets when you are all mixed up together with the others in the same body?’ asked Aquitain a little confused.
‘He sings and all the others go to sleep.’ replied the reds. ‘Then, he tells us secrets just for us.’
On hearing this admission the blues, greens and browns got quite agitated and began abusing the reds.
‘Calm down all of you.’ said Aquitain. ‘I’ve got a suspicion that each of you colours has a similar secret. How about you blues does he put the others to sleep and tell you special secrets?’
All the blues went quiet and pretended that they were deaf.
‘Come on out with it. Let’s clear the air.’
‘Yes he does that for us as well.’ replied the blues collective. The browns and greens also admitted that he put the others to sleep and told them secrets as well.
‘I’m ashamed of all of you. You were specifically formed by Granite to be neutral in all your decisions. It sounds to me like you are all being persuaded to think in a certain way by the Dark One. Your secrets you keep from each other are no more than instructions on how to make the other members of the collective to do what the Dark one wants. By cheating on each other you have not only let Granite down you let the whole of your world down. I’ve changed my mind about putting you back together again. I think it’s better you stay apart. That way you can cause no more trouble.’
‘Please’ said the collective mind of the browns. ‘You must remake us.’
‘Why?’ asked Aquitain.
‘Yes you must remake us.’ said the collective of blues and the reds and greens.
‘Why?’ repeated Aquitain impatiently. ‘I’m waiting?’
‘We must all join together to answer you.’ said the blues.
‘OK.’ said Aquitain ‘but no fighting among yourselves or trying to do anything silly again or I’ll stun the lot of you.’
The four separate clouds moved together and mingled then the full collective spoke to Aquitain and he recognized the voice in his mind immediately. It was Glammer.
‘Hello Aquitain. I caused the separation so that you would know my true nature. I’m not truly neutral but equal parts good and bad, chaos and order each part has had its own agenda just like the Moonmist collective. I have a vast amount of knowledge dispersed among the members of this collective but the loss of one member would render much of that knowledge unusable.’
‘You should know that you are a pawn in a game played by mighty Powers. By finding and releasing the dragon Granite you have succeeded in changing the balance on this world that has existed for nearly fifty Moonmist years. This will have great repercussions both within and outside Moonmist. You will have attracted the attention of the gods and other lesser Powers and that is not good. You will be much more vulnerable than before and I wish to help you.’
‘Why?’ asked Aquitain again.
‘I believe that we were joined together for a purpose but we have never been able to determine what it was. When Granite created Glammer and made her an assistant collector we believed he had some higher purpose in mind but he would never tell us.’
‘When we first saw your spirit aura we knew that you were much more than you appeared, you were like us. You were made for a purpose. If you remake us as Glammer then our destinies will be intertwined. We will help you find your purpose and you will help us with ours.’
Aquitain was quite surprised at this revelation but also quite excited. Maybe he could get a few answers.
‘So you want to form an alliance with me?’ he asked.
‘Yes you could call it an alliance.’
‘May I ask you some questions before I decide?’ asked Aquitain.
‘You may ask but I may not know the answer until I am made whole.’
‘I guessed that might be the case.’ stated Aquitain. ‘But let’s try anyway.’
‘What is Granite?’
‘He is a powerful elemental dragon.’ replied the collective.
‘Is he some type of Power or deity?’ asked Aquitain.
‘Yes he is very powerful but not a god.’ replied the collective.
‘Does he have a title?’ asked Aquitain.
‘He was the Warden of Moonmist before you.’ said the collective.
‘Yes and what else?’ asked Aquitain.
The collective were silent as if trying to decide whether they should tell him anymore.
‘If we are in an alliance together we need to be honest with each other. What are his other titles?’ asked Aquitain.
‘He is the Lord High Protector of Crystalhaven which is like a Warden.’ said the collective as if it meant something.
‘Where is Crystalhaven?’ asked Aquitain.
‘Crystalhaven is the old name for Mudrun before the storm.’ replied the collective hesitantly.
‘Ah so he’s the Warden of Mudrun.’ thought Aquitain. This confirmed what Terren had said.
It all started to make sense. If Granite was the Warden of Mudrun and the Warden Moonmist then he would have visited both. During one of his visits here he was trapped. If he was imprisoned here for about fifty Moonmist years then owing to the time difference between worlds he was away for roughly 250 Mudrun years. The Great Storm happened a few hundred Mudrun years ago. If he was imprisoned before the Great Storm th
en perhaps the storm happened because he wasn’t there to watch over Mudrun.
Perhaps Granite was an Agent of Chaos and the society there got out of balance because he wasn’t there. Perhaps the Agent of Chaos Schlum had been sent here before Aquitain to find Granite and had been somehow corrupted. He began to see himself in a new light. Perhaps Agents of Chaos are really necessary after all. Maybe Glammer was involved.
‘I’m guessing that you were somehow involved in Granite being imprisoned here. I am right?’ asked Aquitain.
The collective was silent.
‘Oh that’s great! You want to form an alliance so that I will protect you from Granite? You have got to be jesting! He is the most powerful being I have ever met. I shall have to think deeply about this.’ And he sat and adopted the position for meditation. He needed to logically and unemotionally consider what to do.
‘Let’s first consider the advantages.’ he thought.
‘Let’s face it I’ve got many more problems than answers and Granite hasn’t been any help. Glammer has a lot of local knowledge, which could be very helpful in solving some of the problems. She is also scared of what Granite might do to her and the other Radiants. If she thinks that I might be able to help defend her in some way that will make her very keen to help me. I have much more to gain than lose.’
‘Now on the negative side remaking Glammer is likely to really upset Granite but what is he likely to do? I released him from his prison so he owes me. He has no reason to harm me although he might still wish to punish Glammer. If I remake Glammer then I could argue that I intend to make her atone for her deeds. He might buy that.’
The collective started talking again.
‘We admit that we have helped your enemy but he also knows that we have helped you. If you remake us to our oneself then we will help only you. Now that each of the factions knows that the Dark One has corrupted us before we will be able to resist his interference. We may be able to find your love one’s spirit and help her if she has not passed over to the realm of the dead.’
