Blood Moon Cycle
Chapter Three

Rielle followed Solidus down the mountain path, to one side and a few steps behind the Hermit mage. The mountains were quiet, and even the constant wind did little to break the silence. Rielle grew restless and tried to strike up a conversation with her quiet companion.

“The Mercury Mountains are not as bad as the stories all say. It seems rather peaceful to me.” Solidus chuckled without enthusiasm.

“I have set spells to protect the path from the base of the cliff to the cabin at the peak. When I came here I grew tired of fighting back the mountains very quickly. The stories you have heard about the mountains are probably much less frightening than the real thing.” Rielle tried to imagine worse things than what she had heard.

“So there really are werewolves and ghosts and things?” Solidus nodded.

“Yes, but there are much more terrible things out there than ghosts and werewolves. Things that, like me, the world has forgotten exist.” Rielle faltered a step. “Like what?” She asked tentatively. Solidus chuckled again, this time some emotion breaking through to the surface.

“You are very inquisitive. For now you don’t need to know what is here. But to give you a taste, I will say that there are creatures here. Vile, evil creatures with insatiable bloodlust. And some of them are even older than I am.” This almost stopped Rielle cold and she had to run a few steps to catch up to Solidus.

“Older than you?” Solidus nodded.

“By several hundred years.” Rielle shivered.

“If they are so evil and bloodthirsty, why have they not left the mountains and killed everyone?” Solidus sighed to himself.

“I guess I should tell you. It is my duty as your master to teach you, and that is not limited only to magic. Do you know how the world was created?” Rielle thought back and managed to dredge up some memories from when she was young.

“My mother taught me that it was created by a supreme Deity.” Solidus laughed.

“Are they still squabbling over Deities down below? The world was actually formed by Six Deities.” Rielle shrugged her shoulders.

“I was never one for religion.” Solidus nodded.

“Which, until now, was a good decision. Even since I was amongst the rest of the world there has always been fighting about who’s religion was correct. It was a rather nasty confrontation and is partly why I became a hermit. When I was much younger there were seven main religions, each contending for the spot of supreme truth.” Rielle nodded.

“There are six that I know of now.” Solidus nodded.

“I personally stamped out the seventh religion. Or at least I thought I had.” Rielle stared at Solidus.

“You what?” Solidus rubbed his forehead.

“This is going to take a great deal more explanation than I was hoping for.” He cleared his throat and glanced back at Rielle.

“In the beginning, Six Deities used their immense power to form the world out of chaos. Four of the Deities were rulers of the four elements, Wind, Water, Earth, and Fire. The last two Deities were Good and Evil. Though they are opposites they needed each other for balance and called the four elements together to help them create the world in a balanced manner. Using their combined powers, the Six called forth a great maelstrom that enveloped the chaos and separated it’s elements. Then the six forced the elements to collide with one another, fusing them into a single mass.” Solidus glanced back again and Rielle nodded to show she was keeping up with his story.

“The mass shifted and broke and healed itself several times until the elements became evenly balanced. This is how the Mercury Mountains were formed.” Rielle suddenly looked a little lost. Solidus scratched his chin in thought.

“Think of it this way. Say you took a blanket and spread it out on the ground and found it was too big to fit where you wanted it to. So, you grabbed the blanket in the center and pulled it towards you. The blanket stays smooth where you pulled it, but the extra crumples and piles up in ridges and hills.” Rielle envisioned the blanket and then nodded her understanding. Solidus continued.

“When the world finished forming the elements, though balanced, could not fit in the place allotted to them. So they collided and were thrust upward, creating the jagged formations of the Mercury Mountains.” Rielle nodded.

“So it is like stepping in the sand? You step and the sand piles up on either side of your foot as it is displaced.” Solidus nodded.

“Sort of. It is more like putting the sand in a bucket, then putting too much sand on top and trying to push it down in. The extra would either pile up and make mountains, or fall over the edges.” Rielle nodded and motioned for him to go on. “When the world had finished forming, each of the Six took a piece of it to shape in the way they saw fit. Each of these places reflected the element of the Deity that formed it. Plains for the Wind. Forests for Earth. Oceans for the Water. Deserts for Fire.” Rielle thought for a moment and then an idea struck her.

“That sounds like the four great Kingdoms.” Solidus nodded again.

“When human kind was created, groups of people flocked to each of the Deities and worshiped them as the creator of the world. That is what eventually caused the fight over which religion was correct. They all were right, but none of the humans would stop and think about it long enough to realize it. Eventually the people who worshipped the Deity of good became overzealous and could only see the rest of the world as evil. They planned to take over the world by force, and because they worshipped the Deity of good they had been blessed with incredible magical potential and would have been able to succeed. The world would have fallen to them and balance would have been thrown in to chaos. So, to keep the balance, the Deity of good caused their entire kingdom of Alenon to collapse into the sea. Save for a few individuals who, knowing that all the Deities had worked together in balance, prayed to their Deity for protection. Their Deity heard them and protected their small temple from the ocean’s angry waters.” Rielle was enthralled by the story and had to actively force herself to continue taking each step along the mountain path.

“Wouldn’t sinking the Kingdom into the sea cause balance to shift anyway?” Solidus nodded.

“You are very perceptive. Yes, destroying the civilization would have thrown everything out of balance. However, The Deity of evil knew that all Six of the Deities relied on the balance to obtain their highest power. At the moment the Deity of good drowned the Kingdom of Alenon, the Deity of evil drew all of the evil creatures that worshipped it, and had been created by it, into the Mercury Mountains and Sealed them there.” Rielle suddenly felt like she didn’t like the Silence in the Mountains anymore.

“So that is why the creatures never come down from the mountains. But why are there still deaths near the mountain if they never come out?” Solidus looked out over the mountain range.

“The deaths are caused by normal creatures. Creatures that, out of desperation or hunger or any other number of reasons, strayed too close to the mountains and were corrupted by it, causing their bloodlust. I try to keep the incidents to a minimum and ward off the creatures, But I am only one person. I cannot be everywhere at once and sometimes a creature gets through and, regrettably, someone dies.” Rielle was saddened but nodded anyway.

“I understand. At least you try.” Solidus simply nodded. Rielle bit her lip nervously and hurriedly changed the subject.

“So there were Six Deities who created the world to achieve balance. And the people of the world gathered to them and created six main religions. But you said there was a seventh.” Solidus nodded again.

“Yes, a seventh religion that did believe that the six Deities had created the world together.” Rielle frowned.

“That doesn’t seem too bad.” Solidus scoffed.

“They believed that the world had been created by the Six, but they believed it should be returned to the state of chaos it had been in before it had been created.” Rielle swallowed hard.

“So maybe it is bad then.” Solidus harrumphed.

“They were fool hardy and even those who had worshipped the Deity of evil had feared them as dark beings. Each member of the religion, when they came of age, had a demon lodged inside of them.”

“A demon?” Rielle shuddered at the thought. “I thought they were a myth.” Solidus shook his head.

“No, demons are warped souls created from what is left of the chaotic energy left after the Maelstrom that created the world. When someone dies in this world their soul leaves their body and travels to a higher plane of existence. The place where the Six Deities exist. To get there they must travel through the chaos that existed before the world came to be. Sometimes a soul is taken by the chaotic energy and becomes corrupted and twisted, eventually becoming a demon if it cannot replace its way back out. A way has been made now, a path that souls may follow, but some still fall from the path, and those who lost their way before are still within the chaos.

However, Demons cannot exist in either this world or the higher plane as they are consumed by chaos and each realm is built from balance. They must either be summoned and bound here, or given an opportunity to inhabit a living human body. The human gains great power, both physical and magical, in exchange for hosting the demon. However, if the human is particularly weak, or the demon particularly strong, the demon can corrupt and take over the human’s body.” Rielle shuddered again.

“Why would anyone want to risk such a fate?” She asked, almost sickened by the idea.

“Power.” Solidus replied simply. “Imagine you could gain power like mine with no effort on your part. Simply host another being inside of you and suddenly you could level an army with the flick of your finger.” Rielle looked at Solidus.

“You can level an army with a flick of your finger?” She asked in amazement. Solidus laughed.

“No, I was just trying to give you a reason why someone would sell themselves to a demon. They imagine they can gain such power. They don’t understand how much practice it takes to gain such power, and how much more it takes to control it. Using power before they can control it could destroy them entirely. However that rarely happens because the demon won’t let it’s host use too much power at once. They may be twisted and, in most cases, evil. But they will protect their hosts to the best of their ability. They still need their host to anchor them to this world.” Rielle nodded.

“I understand. So why did you destroy them?” Solidus cleared his throat.

“They were building an army. Summoning the most powerful demons they could control and placing them inside their followers. They planned to take the world and throw it severely out of balance so that the elements that formed the world would collapse and return to chaos.” Rielle gasped.

“Why would they do such a thing? Wouldn’t that destroy them as well?” Solidus shrugged. “I can’t claim to understand their intentions. Most of them believed that if the world were destroyed and thrown into chaos, then they would live solely in the higher plane. And a few that I fought did it only because they wished to cease existing.” Rielle put one hand over her mouth.

“They are insane.” Solidus nodded.

“Most assuredly. And until now I had thought all of them were destroyed.” Rielle carefully thought through everything she had been told.

“If they are not all dead then…”

“They are still working from the shadows, still aiming for their goal.” Solidus said. “This is all I will say for now. We will rest here for the night and set off again in the morning.” Rielle glanced around and found that, during the course of their discussion, they had traveled all the way down the mountain and reached the clearing they had been in early that morning.

The sun was setting and the trees cast ominous shadows across the clearing. Rielle’s eyes were drawn to the dead Felle Wolf. She resisted the urge to shudder again and nodded to Solidus.

“Ok, but can we camp a little further away from that?” She asked, pointing at the wolf. Solidus half smiled, which angered Rielle and caused her cheeks to burn.

“As you wish. There is a place not far from here by the cliffs that will provide us with some shelter from the wind.” Rielle nodded again and motioned for Solidus to lead the way.

The morning came quickly and Rielle didn’t feel rested at all. She sat up, trying to work the kinks out of her neck and back, and saw Solidus bent over a small camp fire. He took things out of his pack a sprinkled them into a pan that was sizzling over the fire.

“There is a stream a little ways from here that pours out of the cliffs if you would like to wash.” Solidus stated as he worked. Rielle marveled at how he had known she had woken up without turning to look.

She followed the cliff until she came to a small spring bubbling out of the cliffs. She knelt down beside the small pool created by the spring and quickly washed her hands and face.

“It will feel wonderful to get back to civilization where I can take a warm bath and sleep in a soft bed.” She said to her reflection in the water. She sighed and thought back on the day before as she washed. Everything felt like a blur to her now.

It was difficult to grasp how much had happened to her in just a single day. She was a mage, the mountains she was sitting near were the domain of an evil deity, and a dead religion was trying to destroy the world by throwing it into chaos. She had met an old hermit who looked young and who was a powerful mage and skilled fighter.

“And a competent cook.” Rielle reminded herself as the smells of whatever Solidus had been cooking floated by her. She quickly finished then stood and returned to camp to replace Solidus scooping a spoonful of something onto a plate. He held the plate out to Rielle and she took it. It tasted like nothing she had ever eaten, and looked like nothing she had ever seen, but it tasted good and she ate it without complaint.

Solidus was quiet for the rest of the morning. He quickly cleaned up the camp and set off into the trees, not waiting for Rielle to follow. Rielle rushed to follow the hermit and nearly had to jog to keep up with his pace.

Just before noon they came to a small village. The villagers greeted Solidus warmly and invited him to stay for lunch. He graciously accepted and introduced Rielle. The lunch was rushed but filling. Afterwards Solidus managed to barter for two horses to carry them the rest of the way to the small town that the allied armies were using as a base to protect the Southwestern Gate. They set out at a hard pace across the plains and Solidus started to ask Rielle questions.

“How large is the force the allied kingdoms have gathered?” Rielle counted the battalions in her head.

“Twenty thousand troops at either gate, give or take. There could be more now, I have been gone for more than a week.” Solidus nodded.

“And how many troops do the Telatians control?” Rielle thought back to her briefing.

“At first there were a few thousand. After they were driven back they returned with reinforcements. They easily equaled the allied armies. It is all we can do now to keep them on the other side of the gate.” Solidus nodded again and lowered his head in thought. Rielle, as curious as she was, chose to keep her questions to herself and let Solidus think. After a few miles Solidus grunted.

“Rielle.” Rielle jerked awake and realized she had been nodding off.

“Yes?” She asked, shaking her head to clear it of sleep.

“Practice raising and lowering your shield. Let us see how proficient you can become by the time we reach our destination.” Rielle nodded immediately and Solidus went back to his thoughts. Rielle focused on her inner power and began to make it build. It was difficult to do through the bouncing and jarring created by her horse’s fast pace. Eventually she managed to build enough energy to create a shield around her. She felt the familiar pressure and, after a few minutes, released the shield again. She felt weakness enter her body and it was difficult to stay in her saddle. But, a few minutes later the weakness passed.

“Again.” Solidus said without turning in his saddle. Rielle harrumphed and tried again. This time it wasn’t as difficult to build her energy and it didn’t take her quite as long to raise the shield. After she released the shield she felt the weakness again. And again, after she had recovered, Solidus called for her to repeat the process.

By nightfall, when they stopped to make camp, Rielle had discovered that Solidus, though kind and soft-spoken, was a difficult task master. He forced her to erect her shield over and over until she could build it without excessive amounts of thought. The whole day had been filled with Rielle raising and lowering it and raising it again when she had the strength. She felt exhausted.

Solidus built a small fire and prepared a meal. After eating, he cleaned up and then stood and began walking away from camp. Rielle jumped up to follow, but Solidus turned and held up a hand.

“You need your sleep.” He told her simply. She frowned but nodded and laid down on her bed roll. Solidus nodded. “Sleep well, we will arrive at the Gate sometime tomorrow.” Rielle sat upright.

“But how could we get so far so quickly?” Solidus pointed at the bedroll.

“Sleep.” He told her again. Rielle scowled, laid back down, and watched as Solidus walked out into the darkness. Rielle rolled over, questions swimming in her head. But, eventually, her exhaustion overcame her curiosity and she drifted into sleep.