Sunday, March 11, 2007

The Third Moon
A book/story I'm working on. Here are the first few pages. I'd really appreciate it if you guys rated this and tell me what I'm doing wrong/right and all that. Enjoy!(Also, all characters, ideas, places, and any other original concept of this story is (c) to Me! Thank You!

'W-Where...where is it?'
'All around.'
'...What do you mean?'
'Watch the sky.'
'I don't...understand.'
'The End is Coming.'
'...The end...'

A blistering wind raged, braking as it swept into the rocky cliff-faces that filled the terrain. Newly fallen snow blanketed the jagged earth and bits of the white dust rode out with the wind. The sky glistened with stars, like it was wet with dew. High in the sky a round, full, blue moon shone through the darkness. The dim light lit the canyon, outlining the mountain ranges that lay not far to the north. Another outline crossed the almost barren tundra. Its silver, matted pelt dulled in the moonlight. The creature's breathing grew heavy as she struggled for air. A watery droplet fell from her shoulder and tainted the pure white snow, mixing it with a deep crimson. Another gush of blood flowed from the wound on her shoulder and landed on top of the spot already there. Haze filled her yellow eyes as consciousness began to slip away. Once again she let out a great huff and with that the wolf collapsed into the icy sheet.
A small thumping sound greeted Katan as she awoke. Her limbs were still numb with pain, but she shakily rose to her paws anyway. The air carried on it the faint scent of prey. Katan stuck her nose into the air and let the smell drift by her. She wasn’t about to pass up a meal, even if she was injured. She focused her eyes on the landscape before her, scanning the area for any sign of life. Suddenly a tiny movement caught the wolf’s gaze. Katan slowly moved her head to see a thin, white rabbit hurriedly scraping through the snow. She hunched her back, tensing her muscles and clawing the ground. Seconds later she burst into a run, headed straight for the unsuspecting prey. The rabbit started to dart off, but the she-wolf had already caught up with it. In the midst of the run she swept out her clawed paw and crashed into her prey, sending clouds of snow into the air. When the air cleared Katan sat triumphantly over the rabbit, holding down its neck with her paw. Unfortunately she was already breathing heavily again. A catch like that would have been an easy feet at any other time, but the pain in her shoulder had come back. Katan gritted her teeth to fight back the urge to howl out her grief. She forced herself to ignore it and bit down into the flesh. It was a measly portion compared to what she usually had grown accustomed to, but Katan was still grateful for the food.
After gulping down the last remains of her kill, she padded to a shallow crevice where one spot was free from the snow thanks to the roof that had caught it all. Katan sat down on the dry area and turned her head to get a better look at her wounds. The main problem was a huge gash stretching across her left shoulder. The fur around it was matted with blood, but the gash had stopped bleeding badly, so she didn’t have to worry about blood loss. Katan rasped her tongue over it a few times to expel any infection and got back to her feet. Taking time to wait for it to heal would mean delaying her journey was out of the question. She knew that she had few days left. Katan imagined the stones relics that she had only heard of as a pup. They were a passive place to find one’s self. She had been told that it was there where the truth could be sought. It was the only place she wanted to go. The gray she-wolf looked around, and then closed her eyes, remembering the directions that she had been told. They were incredibly vague and hard to figure out, but she expected nothing less from Retic. He was an odd wolf and one of the Anoak. The Anoak was a group of male wolves in the pack that kept all of the pack’s secrets. Where they hunted, the location of their dens, Naming day for newly born pups, everything, and the relics site was the most sacred place for the pack. Its location was never given unless necessary. Katan was lucky that she had even gotten the unclear riddle from him. She thought back to the directions.

The orange sun melted into the horizon as night approached. She didn't have much time. Katan needed to get the information now.

"Please, Retek! I need to know!" Katan pleaded. She was unsure of whether or not she could make it in her condition, but she had already made up her mind about it.

"You’re going to end up hurting yourself." Retek replied nonchalantly, masking his true concern. Katan scowled at him. He was always so relaxed and laid-back. It annoyed her to death.

"All right, fine." Retek said giving up with his lazy attempts to change her mind. "Listen closely because I'm only saying this once." Katan drew nearer to her friend and perked up her pointed ears.

"You must follow the Shores of Awakened Souls, into the mouth of the beast, and climb the Walkway of the Moon. There you'll find your place." Retek finished and waited for Katan’s answer.

Katan didn't reply immediately, but after a few minutes of silence she spoke. "I asked for directions, not gibberish!"

The outburst made Retek grin childishly. "Well, Katan you’ll just have to figure it out now won’t you."

As Katan recalled the event another memory flew into her thoughts. It was a body. A wolf body. It was in a muffled heap on the snow-laden ground. His black, charcoal pelt stuck out tremendously among the white, icy surroundings. Katan tried to dismiss the thoughts, but they kept coming. A closer look at the wolf would show you that it was dead. Blood trickled down the forehead and seeped the snow. The wolf’s eyes were open, yet lifeless and his teeth were still barred. It was as if he could start growling any second, but no, he was dead. Katan shook her head viciously to forget the dreadful thought. Luckily she was freed from the gory scene. The she-wolf stared at the ground for a moment, slowly calming down. She never wanted to remember that horrible memory ever again, but it still haunted her.

Pulling herself together Katan began to get back on the subject of the relics. First, Retic had said ‘the Shores of Awakened Souls.’ She had no idea what that meant, but it must be somewhere where there is water. Katan went through a list in her mind of all of the waterways that she had seen. None could have anything to do with 'awakened souls.'

"Aaaaahhhhh!" Katan growled, "This is going to be impossible!"

"You shouldn’t talk to yourself." A cool voice replied out of nowhere. Katan flashed her gaze to her right to see a male wolf with a coal black pelt; of course his back was to her, so Katan couldn’t see his face. Katan stood for a second in shock. She had thought she was alone; a minute earlier she had not sensed anyone near.

"Who are you? Or better yet, why are you here? You are not of my pack." Katan growled half as a threat and half out of curiosity.

"And what exactly is your 'pack'?" The wolf asked calmly, as if he had never heard of such a thing. He showed no signs of wanting a fight, or being afraid.

Katan hesitated before answering with slight pride, "I’m of The Pack of the Blue Moon!"

"Aren’t we special." The wolf chuckled slightly. "Why is the one of Pack of the Blue Moon all the way out here? Looking like a piece of freshly killed prey?"

"That’s none of your concern!" Katan growled with sudden anger. "You have no right to question me in the first place!"

"Very well." He replied unaffected by Katan's words. "Then I suppose I will leave you, Katan." The wolf still kept his back to he as he said this.

Katan gazed at the black wolf in front of her. Shock and remains of her anger shone in her yellow eyes. "I never told you my name."

"Oh dear," The black one said in his unusual laid-back tone. "It seems that I’ve slipped." With those last words the mysterious black wolf darted to his left where a rock formation lead up to a cliff side.

Katan stood for a moment, trying to understand who he was. Then she darted up the cliff side after him. Wind whipped and pulled at her thick fur and stung her eyes. The she-wolf was already only going at half speed. She hated being wounded. It limited her abilities. A jolt of numb pain branched through Katan's limb. She finally stopped at the flattened top of the rock, only to find a few scattered boulders here and there. The black wolf was gone. 'Was that just a hallucination?' Katan asked herself. She couldn't be sure. After all that had happened, she couldn't be sure of anything anymore. Katan looked up to the sky. The sun was almost at its highest point, meaning the day was already half over. The she-wolf then sent her gaze out across the land before her. She could see almost everything from up here.

The thought of the day's ending made Katan remember the day that was soon to come on the half way mark in spring. Naming day for the pups. It was a day of celebration for all of the pack when the newborns born that year received a name and began to teach themselves to fight and hunt. Although, for some, Naming Day wasn’t so joyful. It was a law in the pack that all pups are to be named on the same day, however if a pup is born after naming day they are not given a name. These exceptions are made to wait a year until the next naming day. Katan thought it to be senseless. A whole year of being called 'It'. Katan shifted her stare towards her paws. She remembered being born a week late and having to wait. It might not have seemed like much to the others and they probably didn’t think it mattered at all, but still, being nameless hurt her self-esteem, at least for that year. Katan had felt so great when she received her name. She had felt complete and thus her stubborn, cocky, outgoing nature had surfaced.
Jumping down the rocks, Katan managed to land safely on the soft, snowy earth without opening her wound. Aching and clueless, the wolf set out, bolting waywardly across the tundra in search of the first destination. 'No matter what it takes...' She thought, determination flared in her eyes, 'I'll find it!'

The wolf kicked up clouds of powdery snow behind her, unaware of a set of eyes that had been on her since her first arrival. They pierced after the wolf, narrowing into dangerous slits.



Guuuuuuuuuuuurk!

The frustrating sound of hunger bellowed out of Katan's empty stomach. The timber wolf, now barely able to look forward, padded through the late winter's snow, her eyes dulled and her eyelids heavy. Two weeks had passed. Nothing. That rabbit that she had caught so many days ago, so thin and dainty though it was was the only thing that kept her alive. It had been her last morsel of food. Nothing. It was a truly horrifying definition of this land, but true all the same. No prey, no plants, hardly any water (Except for a half-frozen brook that had been found a few days earlier.), Katan raised her head and gazed forward. It was an endless stretch of white and gray. It was a deadly sea, ready to swallow any unfortunate creature up into its gaping jaws. Katan just happen to be that creature.

Her stomach lurched again, jolting her with the numb ache of starvation. Her limbs felt weak, but she couldn't stop. She felt that if she stopped the monstrous land would, indeed, consume her completely.

'I'm going to die here.' A nagging voice told her. 'There never were any shores to follow, any path to find the place. It was a lie.'

"Truly?"

Katan seemed to have been jolted awake. A small voice, as if that of a whisper, called to her, interrupting her hopeless thoughts. The wolf had subconsciously walked somewhere off track, somewhere into a nest of scattered rocks and frozen earth. Her eyes came up, looking about slowly. She didn't have the strength to be very dynamic about it.

To her great surprise, a spotless white fox lay nestled in the case of boulders, his eyes an odd reddish glow as he peered knowingly at the intruder.

Katan's eyes blurred a bit as she tried to breathe in a scent. He had been the first live thing to see since half a moon cycle.

"A bit wary are you, wolf?" The fox seemed to half sneer at his own comment and turned his head downward towards something, tearing through it with his sharp canines.

The she-wolf's eyes stretched as she regained enough of her vision to make out what it was. A corpse. But not any corpse. A fox's. She was speechless. This fox was…was eating his own kind, something all things forbid. Obviously, the white creature noticed Katan's reaction, because a bitter chuckle rumbled out of his blood-drenched maw.

"You seem so surprised. So I'm guessing this is your first visit to Dod Himmel, eh?" The fox seemed eerily comfortable talking with his own's corpse lying in front of him. "Don't judge me with your morals, wolf. Out here is different than in your safe little pack."

This really took Katan by surprise. The calm, laid-back creature had suddenly turned incensed, his eyes staring into Katan. No, right through her. However, despite her immense hunger, the she-wolf could not take such behavior towards herself and her pack lying down.

"Then how should I judge you, hm?" Katan snarled, her irritation growing from hunger. "You sit there eating one of your own! Your kin!"

"You can't possibly understand the laws of Dod Himmel." He spat back, clearly frustrated with the she-wolf already.

"Then how should I judge you, hm?" Katan snarled, her irritation growing from hunger. "You sit there eating one of your own! Your kin!"

"You can't possibly understand the laws of Dod Himmel." He spat back, clearly frustrated with the she-wolf already.

"All the land that stretches east and west, north and south of here. The land called Dod Himmel is a territory of nothing. There is no prey here. Nothing but the earth and the sky. This place is the 'Dead Heaven'." The fox continued, "No life, and I suppose no death as well. These lands seemed to have escaped time itself. Never changing or growing, dying or living." He stopped, and then looked directly into Katan's icy optics. "It was either I, or my companion here. That is how it works."

A low growl still shook in the timber wolf's throat. "To kill a friend, a brother! That is unforgivable, no matter what the conditions!"

"Whatever, wolf." The white creature countered nonchalantly. "You can't change it."

"I should kill you, you traitor!"

"Go ahead." Katan was surprised by his reply, "I'll die in a short while anyway. You'd just be quickening the inevitable."

Katan looked at the fox with uneasy eyes. How could he act this way? No guilt, no hope, no instinct. There was nothing left inside this wretched but unpromising waiting for the end. Then she realized something. That had been her a few minutes before. Was this what Dod Himmel did to one's mind?

"In fact, I think I'll ask you of it as a favor." The fox's voice pulled Katan from her thoughts. "I have eaten of my loved one's corpse, now I shall accept punishment."

There was a cocky smirk on his muzzle, as if this were all just some horrible joke. It disgusted Katan to think that he might actually enjoy being torn apart.

"I want to tell you something first, though." He added coyly. "Over there," he began, making a movement with his bushy tail, "Is a tunnel, almost completely hidden by the boulders. I discovered it only yesterday. I believe it is the way out of this place."

"If that's true, then why didn't you leave? You can't possibly want to die in this territory?" Katan questioned, suspicious of the fox's intentions.

"I have tried." He replied, hanging his head in defeat, "I have tried, but every time I did, my paws were frozen to the entrance to it. The land did not want me to enter it. I killed and devoured my own kind, after all." Then he added softly, "Kill me then leave this place. See where the tunnel takes you."

Katan was rooted like a tree, her limbs made of unmovable stone. Her orbs of blue held no emotion. She felt nothing for the fox's life. He was a traitor. A Forrade. The death he got was what he deserved. At least, that was what she told herself, but she couldn't help feeling a small spark of pity for him below her disgust. However, she wouldn't let that happen to her, and that meant she had to end his life. So she could continue hers.

Baring her white canines, Katan leapt forward, sinking them into the fox's jugular. Warm blood flooded into her mouth, and flesh ripped apart from her fangs. The taste was nauseating, so much so, that the she-wolf could barely keep her jaw locked onto her prey. She stole a last glance at the face of the fox, only to see a crooked, withered smile across his face. That was more revolting than the vile taste of his blood.

A low, gurgling noise signaled the end of the white fox's life, thus, Katan dropped the creature and gazed at it with hesitation. Her throat tightened at the thought of what she had to do, but her stomach seemed to roar, impatiently awaiting its greatly needed nourishment. Gulping down any last resistance she had, Katan dove into her kill, swallowing mouthfuls of flesh and devouring what little meat was left on the creature's bones. She hated the taste, loathed it to the point where she wasn't even sure if her body would accept it, but, unsurprisingly, it did.

After chewing the last morsel from the thin bones, Katan looked over at the half-eaten cadaver of the fox's companion. Although her strength had yet to return, she couldn't bring herself to eat it. Instead, the she-wolf turned her gaze towards the grouping of heaped boulders and piles of gray snow that the fox had motioned to earlier. Looking from a distance, no one would have guessed that any such passage could exist there, but, upon closer inspection, Katan discovered a small, moss-lined tunnel that seemed to go straight ahead for a while before turning off into the darkness. The wolf found herself taken aback by the scent of the green plant. Drinking in the moist smell, Katan then realized how long it had been since she had even seen life and how much she had missed it.

Exhaling the wonderfully floral aroma, Katan crouched down with a little difficulty and carefully pushed herself into the narrow space. The floor was covered in an extremely heavy blanket of moss and the ceiling dripped from humidity. Oddly enough, the she-wolf felt oddly warm. However, that was impossible, especially in these bitter days of winter. How could she be anything but cold? There was no mistaking it, though. Katan definitely felt a very faint breeze warming the tunnel pleasantly. Where exactly did this passage head? Katan didn’t care, as long as it brought her closer in her search.

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