The Moon's Fangs | 1
4 | living hell

The entire house shook violently. My feet slipped on spilled tea and my hip smacked against the vibrating tiles. If I screamed, it couldn’t be heard over the ceiling being ripped in two and an intense boom that caused everything in the house to jump.

I cringed, curling up in a ball against the kitchen island with my arms over my head. Dishes and appliances crashed to the tile around me. The china cabinet collapsed, smashing partly against the island.

I shoved myself out of the way before the china cabinet could spill its fragile contents on top of me. When I pulled myself up, I caught Nolan yanking Blaire out of the way as a giant blue arm swung at her.

My heart lurched in raw horror.

A being that could have easily passed as Ares, the God of War's monstrous stone-forged clone towered from the crater it made in my living room. It had a hulking, humanoid-type male form and looked like its entire body was carved from pure sapphires. Light bounced off its sharp edges as it turned its mass in my direction. Yellow-gemmed eyes locked on me like a gun at a target range.

My mind flashed back to the nightmare, to the illusion of the monster from inside the sphere. Whatever that monster had been killing, it reveled in it.

A paralyzing tremble overcame my body. The resemblence between the two was uncanny.

This can’t be real. I'm still in a nightmare. This can't be real.

When it took a step toward me, the foundation cracked and splintered under its weight.

“Amelia!” Blaire cried out.

“Run! Get out of there!” Nolan yelled.

The crystal gladiator pulled a double-edged ax off its back made of the same element as itself. Gods. The blades were the size of a stop sign.

I couldn’t move, let alone breathe. If I ran down the hall behind me, I’d be trapped in a dead-end if it followed me. If I made a run for the front door, it would slice me in half. My body trembled so hard, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but gape at the monster’s dead, reflective stare.

The monster rose the ax over its head, preparing a single life-ending stroke, to slice me in two like a hunk of timber. The only thing between us was the kitchen island.

I screamed, collapsing back down to the tile as my legs lost the strength to stand. Sparks flew as the ax sliced through the top half of the island then clean into the stove behind me. Flames flickered up as an instant reaction. I could hear Nolan and Blaire yelling, but I couldn’t understand a single word in the midst of everything else. My heart thundered against my eardrums, turning them hot.

Something struck the counter again above my head while I scrambled and ducked under the fallen china cabinet. Shards of glass scraped my knees, legs, and hands. Biting into every part of visible skin.

Blaire and Nolan both crouched down on the other side, reaching out for me with desperate hands. “Come on!” Blaire cried, voice breaking.

“Hurry!”

I reached out to their outstretched hands, but I wasn’t fast enough. Something seized my ankle, and the next thing I knew, my back had slammed against the opposite wall. Darkness blistered my vision. I gasped for breath, but it had been completely knocked out of my lungs. I grasped for the smallest hints of air, however, the worst of the pain, the most pronounced, sourced from the side of my neck. The invisible, nonexistent snakebite burned white-hot, like someone pressed a searing branding stick against my bare skin.

An oxygen-deprived scream ripped past my lips.

~Save him, save you.~ the mantra echoed with intense urgency. The image of the black-opal ring pulsated in my mind.

Another scream pierced the air as the front door flew off its hinges - ripped clean off by a second identical crystal gladiator. Another monster of war.

Nolan tackled Blaire to the floor behind the toppled-over couch as the second monster chunked the door right at them. Meanwhile, the first one pulled its ax from the ignited stove. Sparks flew, then a dark plume of smoke furled upwards.

My feet slipped on broken glass again as I struggled to get up. Blood ran down my legs from multiple cuts. I panted, stumbled, and snagged the ring out of my back pocket, desperate yet clueless of what to do with it.

Tears streamed down Blaire’s cheeks, hand outstretched despite the distance between us. The very first charm we picked out together caught a glimmer of light around her wrist. One of the butterfly's wings was splattered in blood.

I wasn’t going to make it in time. But if she ran now, she could make it out. She was close enough to the door to make it.

“Blaire, run! Go!” I screamed.

The crystal monster arched its chiseled arm back, setting up to strike me down.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Blaire chunking the wooden bat at the monster. It bonked the gladiator’s head, and it stopped rigidly for a half-second before turning its attention towards my best friend.

“No!”

It hurled the ax through the space Blaire had just occupied before Nolan jerked her out of the way with expert precision. It sliced into the wall. “The ring—” He started to yell, but the second monster charged at them.

Midway to my feet, the gladiator’s rigid knee plowed into my stomach. The breath knocked clear out of my lungs, and stars polluted my vision as I suddenly felt airborne. Everything went stark white as pain stabbed my ribs. Something audibly cracked. And for a moment, I thought I might have blacked out.

While my vision went in and out, I caught short glimpses of the crystalline monster hefting me up on the wrecked roof through the gaping hole. Large, jellyfish-like tentacles dangled in the air. Pain clenched my side as the monster wrapped one of the tentacles around my waist, pinning my arms against my sides.

I tried to scream, but it broke off weakly. Everything hurt so much. Even the smallest breaths I managed to take caused suffering.

The large, slick tentacle began to hoist me up, creating distance between me and the rooftop. When I looked up, I immediately wished I hadn’t.

A colossus wyrm with a pinkish-black see-through exoskeleton like a jellyfish’s hovered over the house. It looked like a galaxy-made beast.

Then I dawned on me. The storm had never simply stopped. This… thing only made it seem that way.

I whimpered and begged for help while tears swam down my cheeks and neck. I squirmed and kicked in the air to no avail. The little fight I had left was worthless.

Blaire screamed from somewhere down below, then Nolan yelled something too, but my senses were tainted by utter terror. A gun somehow manifested in Nolan’s hand, and it was aimed not at the monsters, but upward, in my direction.

He fired.

A thin, bright beam of amber light blinded me.

The ring slipped from my grasp in that moment, then the amber light shot by mere inches from my face - severing the tentacle pulling me up.

Time seemed to slow.

All my focus stayed on the ring spinning towards the hole in the roof. As it spun, something else unexplainable happened. The dark opal ring expanded in size while what looked like a liquid cosmos materialized and swirled within its middle.

“No, don’t!” Nolan yelled out.

I couldn’t control my fall. Blaire’s screams pierced my ears and yanked at my heart as gravity pulled me down. I didn’t have enough time to look up before the swirling galaxy swallowed me headfirst. Pain blitzed through the side of my neck the moment I made contact.

The scenery switched instantly as if changing the TV channel. The anarchy in my house blinked out and I landed into a dune of sand.

The world spun in a red and purple blur. I coughed, spitting dirt from my mouth while squirming free of the remaining tentacle wrapped limply around my arms and torso. I shoved it away like someone with the heebie-jeebies after encountering a gross looking insect. The pinkish-black thing rolled and slid semi-lifelessly down the side of the steep dune, collecting dirt around its exoskeleton.

The ring shrunk back to its normal size, losing its swirling cosmos, and fell into the sand beside me. I stared at it, unable to do anything besides tremble and choke on fear.

“Blaire…?” my eyes jerked around the unknown area, then my voice broke as I yelled her name again. “Blaire!”

I winced, grabbing at my side from the stabbing pain across my ribs. My breath hitched shallowly, holding back a roll of nausea.

A sea of desert waves stretched out in front of me. The waves went on until kissing a dark purple horizon where a rosy-orange planet the size of three suns peaked over a third of the way. Two moons loomed nearby the large planet while on the other side of the sky, a pinkish moon accompanied a plethora of stars.

Behind me, the desert stretched on a few miles before clashing against a tropical forest the color of an untamed sunset. A harsh line severed the two drastically different environments.

For a while, no words came.

On the desert’s side, remains of ruptured marbled ruins poked out of the sand in various locations. The faded green tint had been eroded by years of desert sand, it seemed.

“No, no, no, no…” I whispered, hand clasped to my mouth. Making sense of anything that had happened over the past few hours was impossible. I wanted to believe this was still a dream, a vivid nightmare I couldn’t escape. But the pain across my body said otherwise.

I picked up the ring beside me, barely taking notice of the all-over stinging cuts that now had sand sticking into them, clotting the bleeding. The white flecks were gone from the ring now, leaving it pitch-black in color. Now when I touched it, no images came to mind. It left me feeling empty and alone.

This little band did the impossible. It saved me - but at the same time, it made me abandon my best friend and Nolan. But if the ring brought me here, it could take me back. Right? If I could get back to them, then we could use it again to get away from the monsters and get help.

I struggled to get to my feet. My foot slipped on something hard and slick, but that didn’t matter right now. Once up, I tried tossing the ring in the air. Nothing happened though, and it plopped dully back into the sand. I tried again and again, and with each failure, my hope crushed little by little.

Tears stung my eyes. Could I not get back home? What did this mean for Blaire, and for Nolan? They were going to have to face the monsters on their own. And to top it all off, I couldn’t trust Nolan, a practical stranger, to keep Blaire safe. Not when I had no clue what kind of role he played in all of this. Not when this ring supposedly belonged to him. His family.

I wiped away tears and dirt from my cheeks. The afterthought of what would happen when my dad came home made my heart drop forebodingly. Would he come home to monsters or a crime scene?

Oh God. Everything blurred from the tears welling up.

I fell to my knees next to the rendered useless ring, clenching at my chest with both hands.

~Save him. Save him. Save him. Save—~

“Get out of my head!” I screamed, buckling over from the pain mounting across my ribs.

Something shifted and creaked under my weight. My heart dropped before my body did. A single, short gasp - then whatever laid hidden by the sand under me collapsed inward, pulling me down with it.