Broken Lands

Chapter 420 – Eclipse’s End

“That depends.” Sophia turned from the statue to the shade. “Will you release the moon now? If you don’t, we will have to use the statue.”

The Eclipse Shade’s eyes narrowed and brightened. “Will you? Or will you drown in a wave of my shadows?”

“Seriously, why are you bothering?” Sophia snapped. “You already said you don’t like the taste that much when it’s past the third day and you’re on day four! We’ve had no trouble against your shadow lurkers and will easily defeat anything you throw at us. Why not give in and save yourself the pain? It’s only for this month, and you’ve already had the good part of the month.”

She was trying to be nice to the shade. If he turned her down again, she would use the statue on him. Once she figured out how. Arsalos would surely tell her if she asked.

“Fine,” the Eclipse Shade spat. “But only because it really doesn’t taste that good anymore.”

He opened his mouth and for a moment Sophia could see a crescent shape made of moonlight appear in front of the shade. It flashed and vanished, only to reappear in the sky. The red color that surrounded the eclipse faded and left ordinary pale moonlight. Sophia could see the darkness very slowly sliding away from the moon, just like the end of an eclipse.

The Eclipse Shade faded away in the moonlight.

“He believed you.” Arsalos sounded surprised. “You must have really outclassed his shadow lurkers. It’s been a long time before I’ve seen him give up without sending a shaderipper or at least a few shademarked. Four days isn’t enough to explain it.”

“This happens every month?” Sophia knew that had been implied, but that was a lot more often than any real eclipse.

“No,” Arsalos said seriously. “It takes him some time to recover when the statue is used to burn the moon out of his belly. Since he simply let me go …. It could be next moonturning or it could be several. It will be sooner than if you burnt him, but the statue will be ready to respond. My Lapine will be able to handle it safely; he cannot attack until he has swallowed me, and without the need to take the statue to Clear Moon Lake, they will be in time.”

It sounded like all they’d accomplished was pushing things off for a few months. That was still a win in Sophia’s book, especially since this was a fable and not reality. “Why can’t they take care of that ahead of time normally, then?”

Arsalos chuckled. “Clear Moon Lake reflects what is placed within it. If the statue has not absorbed the light of the moon as it fills, there will be nothing to reflect. It will not work.”

“Then why don’t they take it to the moon during the first full moon? Does it take several full moons to charge?” Sophia knew she was grasping at straws, but it was the first thing she’d have tried. 

“My Lapine can talk, but they are still rabbits,” Arsalos answered. “It takes a full cycle of the moon and they are … not the best at tracking time. I tried that; it failed reliably.”

Sophia winced. She could hear the amused annoyance in Arsalos’s voice. Whether or not it was possible to handle the problem more reliably, the rabbits couldn’t do it. Archons might be able to manage it if they chose to but it was clear that no one was at the moment.

“I will leave you now. When the eclipse is gone, you will be back in the Moonrest Shrine. Place the statue on the pedestal to open the door.” When the statue finished speaking, it froze in place in the same position it held before Arsalos first spoke through it. 

“That has to be three,” Xin’ri said. “The tree, the prairie dogs, Clear Moon Lake, and here makes four. I’m not sure if the encounters between here and Clear Moon Lake count, but four should be enough.”

“I doubt it,” Ci’an stated with a shake of her head. “I’m pretty sure they were the Eclipse Shade following us. I bet we wouldn’t have had to face them if we hadn’t picked up the Lapine from the prairie dogs. I think he chased the bunny there.”

That would explain the marks. It didn’t explain why there were no attacks between the prairie dog colony and Clear Moon Lake, but Sophia supposed there was really no reason for the shade to attack. He didn’t know if they’d just hand the statue back to the Lapine and make it easy for him until they sent the Lapine away for safety without the statue.

“If we came directly here, we wouldn’t have defeated the Eclipse Shade anyway,” Dav reminded Ci’an. “I’d guess that the shrine probably has something in it that directs you to Clear Moon Lake so that you can come back and defeat the Eclipse Shade. That ought to also get you to three locations for the Challenge chain so it’s probably enough.”

A few minutes later, Dav was shown to be correct when the darkness around them faded away to reveal a small stone room with murals on both walls that depicted the war between the moon and the eclipse followed by the rabbit carving the moonstone, dunking it in a lake that glowed with the pale light of the moon, and then defeating the Eclipse Shade with light pouring from the sphere on the statue’s head into the eclipsed moon. 

The one thing it was missing was the location of Clear Moon Lake, but it did have one detail Sophia hadn’t noticed from ground level: the lake in the mural was shaped like a crescent moon. That might well be enough to find it if you spent some time in the area. Realistically, Sophia suspected they’d have abandoned the Challenge chain and moved on to something else unless they encountered someone who knew where the crescent-shaped lake was.

Other than the murals, there were only two things that were notable in the shrine. The first was a pedestal that jutted out from the wall with the mural of the statue, placed directly across from the eclipsed moon on the opposite wall’s mural. Somehow it seemed to be illuminated by a shaft of moonlight that speared through the stone of the ceiling. Sophia wasn’t going to question the ability of a goddess to get her point across, even a minor goddess, and the moon was almost always at least a minor goddess.

The second was a door at the far end of the shrine opposite the entrance. At least, Sophia assumed it was the door Arsalos mentioned; while it was the size of a door, it looked more like an art installation set into an alcove, a slab that had to be moonstone carved into a three dimensional display piece. The stone’s edges were cracked, but inside that a section was almost perfectly carved into a rectangle that set the edges of the carving. 

Inside the boundary was three quarters of a swirling shape that looked a lot like the whirlpool that formed when water went down a drain, but Sophia was certain that couldn’t be what it was supposed to be. Oddly, the whirlpool shape was a different color than the rest of the stone, almost a warm yellow where the rest of the stone was pale and grayish. The cream-colored whirlpool was surrounded by a cutout that emphasized its shape, filled with colorful specks that reflected many different colors. Above the whirlpool floated something that had to be Arsalos herself. If Sophia squinted, she could even see a shadow of a rabbit on the face of the moon facing the sky.

Or maybe it was a duck. It really was pretty hard to tell.

Sophia could see why Arsalos said that large pieces of moonstone were hard to come by. You wouldn’t normally use a heavily cracked piece of stone for a display honoring the gods, but the moonstone was badly cracked and in places looked like it was barely holding itself together. Sophia had to assume that if better stone was available, it would have been used. 

She also had to guess that if the statue were broken, they’d avoid taking the stone from the door; while it was right there, it had to be hard to replace. 

“Are we all ready?” Xin’ri asked the usual question and waited for nods before she set the statue on the pedestal. 

Sophia’s eyes were on the door instead of the shadow. She expected it to lift up and slide away, but it did something far more interesting: the spots of color in the darkness began to shimmer and then glow. The glowing spots twinkled and then spread. Before long, the entire slab was engulfed in a sort of magical glitter. When it faded, the slab of moonstone went with it. 

The open doorway now led to a hallway made of a single panel of dark wood above a floor that almost looked like ice. It was neither ice nor stone, but that was only obvious when you looked closely and noticed the wood grain that ran through the floor.

Well, it was also obvious once they stepped onto the floor. Both the sound and the feel of the floor was wood, not stone, even through Sophia’s boots.

“This is the Moonlit Branches,” Ci’an said as she stepped through the doorway behind everyone else. “It has to be. The carving on the door must have been the upwards spiral. I see why people had a hard time describing it. This … doesn’t look like any branches I’ve ever seen.”

Xin’ri chuckled. “We’re inside a branch. You see how the hallway curves ahead of us? It’s going to split, with one way leading to the exit to the city and the other way leading to a ramp that we can climb. It’s supposed to be a real climb for the first level, forty or fifty feet. There will be another exit to the city up at the top as well as the entrance to that part of the city, the part that requires either completing the basic ground level or having reached the second upgrade.”

“It’s too bad we can’t skip ahead and start at a more appropriate area,” Sophia muttered softly. It was probably loud enough for the others to hear, but they ignored the complaint. It was one they all shared. “We’re headed to the next part of the World Tree next, aren’t we? Or do we want to stop in the Moonlit Branches for the night?”

“It’s afternoon,” Dav said firmly. “There’s no point in heading into the next level just to sleep for the night. We might as well get a place at an inn tonight and head into the World Tree in the morning. There are supposed to be inns near all of the exits for exactly that purpose.”

That was hard to argue with. Sophia knew her tent would be perfectly comfortable for Dav and her, but they couldn’t exactly cook with a campfire inside a wooden branch, which meant they’d either have a cold dinner and lunch or they’d have to break out the magical stove. It was great for some things, but Xin’ri complained about the cost every time they used it. The fact that she was nodding now made it even harder to argue. “Can we at least head up to the higher section of the Moonlit Branches first? I know it’ll probably be a little more expensive, but it’ll mean we don’t have to climb in the morning.”

“Sure.” Xin’ri grinned. “Everyone can go there, including youngsters who haven’t picked up their Calling yet and can otherwise only reach their parents’ homes in the higher branches. Everything on the lowest level is supposed to be a lot more expensive.”