[quote]"I can -- if you allow me to -- share my light with you. Perhaps then you will be even more capable of protecting yourselves against the dangers of the darkness." At least she could try.

She felt that if she concentrated hard enough she could pull the light within herself and extend it to others. She could extend it to them through the Rune of Light that she had just created. She could grant a piece of the sun within her to them.[/quote]

The riders shifted only slightly, obviously distressed but making great pains to hide their fears, while Anise drew a rune on each of them that would chain them to her own Rune of Light. At first, nothing seemed to happen -- but then, the sheer force of Anise's resolve bled into the runes by extension, and the riders began to shimmer with a faint glow of their own light. Each gleamed with a slightly different hue, but all resonated with Anise's own shine. They stared at their hands and examined the armor they wore, and they turned their awed eyes to the Lady of Light. They were beginning to believe.

The old man, though, was not impressed. He stood tall with his wrinkled jowls turned in a frown, his beady eyes peering through Anise. He didn't say anything else -- he'd given his instructions, and the riders knew what to do.

The riders each rushed to their own gryphon, and soon the sky was full of flapping wings. Two of the riders' gryphons also began to gleam with the same glow; these riders were those who trusted the most in Anise, who would believe she was the true Lady of Light that might return the sun to the sky. These two stayed close, the others behind, while Anise led the way to the Mountain and to the mouth of the cavern beneath.

White masks disappeared from the treetops; a tendril of campfire smoke wisped near the gaping cavern entrance, sharp like teeth under the glow of the moon. Inside was cold darkness. Stepping past the maw was like walking into a freezer.

The riders landed and removed the harnesses from their gryphons' beaks; they were as formidable in battle as the soldiers themselves. The gryphons scraped the ground and chortled in anticipation of a fight. The riders awaited Anise's order, each illuminated by her willpower.

The cavern entrance opened into what at first seemed like a black nothingness. No matter how brightly Anise flared her light, there was no wall nor ceiling to be seen: just the smooth stone floor and the close darkness and the frigid cold. Before long, the moonlight behind them was swallowed by the dark. There was no true way to tell which way they had come from, and which way was forward. All words were met with silence. All actions were met with only the dark.

Only after a long walk would Anise finally hear it: the low, faint thrum of a heartbeat.

Ahead, a wall came into view. There was something sculpted in relief there -- something enormous, that towered high into the thick darkness. As Anise stepped closer, she might make out a monstrous claw, a tooth, the tip of a wing, hints of the colossal leviathan that appeared to be sculpted out of the wall. Something black oozed between its ribs, from its stony mouth and eyes. The black ooze pulsed with every low heartbeat.

Out of the dark to the right, Peck stepped slowly forward. He stared at Anise in silent fear -- as if something would go terribly wrong if he made a wrong move.

[hr][quote]Ooh, shiny.

There was a box of glowing blue crystals that could only be trouble. Naturally, Artemis swiped one with tricky (sticky – there was still persimmon juice on her) fingers as she walked by, never slowing. It fell easily in the pocket of her new coat. She absently adjusted her bag on her shoulder as she moved along. It'd be wise to get out of the city soon, she knew. She'd move to a new part of town, as of yet untouched by her, closer to where Nura was hopefully still waiting, get whatever else she could, and leave to… where?[/quote]

While a ruckus was being made around the site of Artemis' explosion -- and a dozen men and women wearing long black coats sprinted through the moonlit alleys in search of their missing quarry -- the part of town she now found herself in seemed comparatively silent. Across a flowered graveyard was a squat red building with spires and emblems that suggested it was a shrine or temple. Stone dragons snarled at the eaves, and silvery chimes tinkled among the trees up high. The doors of the shrine were wide open, showing a glimmer of a huge golden statue of a lady inside, with the image of the sun behind her head. No one was around.

"Boo!" The Kith popped out from behind a gravestone, cackling, and moved to follow Artemis once again, her bare feet squashing the flowers freshly planted at the grave. "That was a neat trick. Don't think I know that one. [i]Boom![/i] Haha!" She flung her arms in the air, her teeth showing in a wide grin. "But I think you should prolly not look so much like a Pirate just now. Shit's about to go down. Stick with me and you'll be okay, don't you worry. And in exchange you can show me those tricks, yeah?"

The chimes above them rang ominously in the breeze. At the edge of town, the trees rustled and snarled.

A shout and a scream went up in the distance behind Artemis; the trees were [i]moving[/i], slithering and breaking the ground with their roots, flinging their branches into running people. Wolves darted through the crowd, their teeth catching on fleeing townsfolk; blood-rats scurried in droves and latched onto feet and legs while the alarm sounded. And then, the Kith swarmed the streets -- children in gray clothes with white masks raced among the rats and wolves and terrifying trees, flinging themselves at the adults with expert martial accuracy, making the earth shake, flooding homes, skewering townsfolk with roots and vines, throwing them high up in the air on a whirlwind and throwing them headfirst into the rocks.

Soon, musketfire rang out among the screams, and the Kith started dropping -- but with the power gone, the town was crippled and overwhelmed.

A bolt of lightning cracked with a blinding flash, and one of the stampeding trees split into flames. Two gryphons and their riders arrived from the outpost, shooting electricity from their spears with precise accuracy while the beasts flapped and screeched and snatched up wolves with their claws.

It had only been a few minutes, but the town was now a battlefield.

"C'mon, let's go to the tribe," the Kith girl begged, tugging on Artemis' coat. "The Kith are gonna win, and we're gonna own the town and everything in it, you'll see. Then you can have everything you want. Claim a house for yourself before someone else does, yeah?"

Though the booms of lightning and the crush of roots into stone echoed war behind them, the temple stood quiet and serene in the moonlit dark -- as if the sound and the reality of the outside world could not cross this threshold.

A skylight inside bathed the golden statue of the Lady of Light in the rays of the moon, and her diamond eyes sparkled. She stared benevolently down at whomever might stand before her; there was a promise of sunlight on her face -- but also an old sadness.

On the floor in front of her were three small platforms that glowed with a color similar to that of the stone Artemis had just stolen from the dock. Atop the leftmost platform was a miniature tornado, swirling perpetually. On the rightmost platform, a bonsai tree grew with its roots completely exposed, gripping the edges of the platform. At the center, a flame burned with nothing to fuel it. Each of the platforms was pressed with a stone handprint.

The handprint on the tree's platform had a sigil at its center. It shimmered bright green, and pulsed ever so slightly, like a heartbeat. The other two handprints were empty and cold -- but should Artemis step close to the fiery platform, Oseely's symbol would appear at the center of the fire's handprint, pulsing a shimmering red. Should she decide to press her hand here, the symbol would remain lit no matter how far she stepped away -- but, it seemed, nothing would happen while the wind platform remained cold.

At the other end of the temple, something was ticking.

A darkened back room was filled by enormous silent cogs and gears, static cords and indiscernible clockwork. There were little lights attached to metal rods that stuck out of huge arches that looked as if they might be meant to spin and twist, were they not so cold and dead now. The ticking, however, came from a bronze clock at the back of the room, with hands that pointed to symbols of water and stone, among others that looked like moons and stars and fire and wind, etched images of little animals and plants that circled the face of the clock. Beneath the clock was a glass cylinder with a hinged door open wide. Inside was a shard of stone just like the one Artemis carried, only this one was dark and dead.

The dim sound of feathery wings flapping preceded the scrabble of claws on the roof overhead. A warbling, lonely screech echoed down. Nura paced up and down the roof of the temple, scratching and fussing at the creaking tiles.

The Kith girl, meanwhile, had refused to go into the temple. She sat on one of the graves outside, watching the battle at a distance as if it were a fireworks show.

[hr][quote]although his initial urge was to examine the magnificent display of flashing lights , a faint hymn caught his attention as he took a few steps to investigate this side, and the familiar hymn sparked a feeling of hope within him that surpassed any logical hesitations, and Lalna made for the hymn, eventually finding his way to what seemed like candlelight [/quote]

As Lalna stepped deeper into the woods, the green Lantern proved to be the only source of light in the complete darkness. The Lantern's green glow cast silhouettes of shivering leaves and moving shadows; the tree trunks appeared and shifted eerily in the light as he passed. Something small scurried across his path, but was gone. So was the light behind him. The only way now was forward, toward the pinprick of flickering candlelight in the deep dark, and the voice that sang so sweetly.

The candlelight began to move; it lifted slightly and swayed a little, back and forth. As Lalna approached, he would see that the little candle was suspended by a rope from a branch. The woman's song echoed all around him, but there was no one to be seen -- until a gray shape shifted among the brush.

They were gray, slightly glowing silhouettes, shaped like people but fading in and out. Spirits of the dead appeared all around Lalna, blocking the way back and emerging out of the way forward. He was surrounded, and they were closing in silently. There was no sound save for the singing woman, echoing among the trees.

Suddenly the singing stopped, and something dark darted in front of Lalna; a shadowy man, all in black, emerged out of the darkness and struck like a snake at Lalna's head, his sharp long fingers poised to skewer his skull --

[i]PING![/i]

The Lord of Shadow's diamond-sharp blades stopped just inches from Lalna's eyes. A green shimmering force-field surrounded Lalna, and the Lantern gleamed brightly in his hand.

The Shadow hissed, and the gray spirits lunged at Lalna all at once -- they disappeared in a puff of mist upon touching the barrier that protected Lalna.

The Lord of Shadow stood tall, glaring down at Lalna with bright red eyes; his features were hidden by the darkness, and no amount of light from the Lantern could illuminate his face. "Hand over the Lantern," he hissed. "It does not belong to you, boy."

All around him, the spirits began to reform. The Lord of Shadow grinned, his sharp teeth bright. "Hand it over and I will send you home."

[hr][quote]She concentrated, hard stone walls appeared around them, and the ground seemed to become stone as well. The stone came together up above to become a roof, cutting of any branches that got in the way, and they fell lifeless to the ground. As the branches holding Palla got cut, a curved slide of smooth, sleek stone appeared under her, delivering her safely next to Naia. The child with the fox mask was trapped with them in the small stone room/hallway, lit only by the violet light from the lantern, which Naia had taken the sheet off of. Even if the trees could break through the hard stone, it would at least take a long while.[/quote]

The branch holding Palla was severed, and she screamed shortly until she realized she was safe on . . . a stone floor? Bewildered, the soldier sat with her hands pressed against the stone as it brought her next to Naia, who seemed very calm considering there was a stone house building itself out of nothing before their eyes.

The attacking trees writhed and struck savagely, but the stone pruned them back and shut them out; they could still be heard on the other side of the wall, scraping and squeezing and tapping against the stone.

The child, meanwhile, was screaming. He clambered against the wall feverishly, ran to another corner and slammed it with the side of his fist, unable to believe that solid rock had just appeared out of nowhere to contain him in darkness. He spun around, breathing quick as a rabbit, his back pressed against the wall, and he saw Naia standing there with the only source of light, the Lantern he'd heard so many stories about.

"Don't kill me!" he screeched in a panic, scrabbling to press himself as close against the wall -- and as far away from Naia -- as possible. "I didn't know you're one of [i]those[/i] people! I'll call off the trees, I'll grant you an alliance with the tribe, just don't kill me!" He dropped to the floor and crossed his arms over his head, defending against a blow he thought would surely come.

Palla stared, her mouth still hanging slightly open; she'd never seen a Kith scared before. She looked to Naia. "What did you do, and how? This is impossible!"