Mythology Au: Part 1.15
Her heart beats frantically as the fifth collision forces the air out of her lungs. This time she could barely hold onto the other’s mane and almost tumbled down below. Down below into the spiralling stairway leading into the abyss.
“Are you still holding onto me, little valkyrie?” Mound’s mellow voice reaches Mist. The sweetness within it makes her stomach churn with fear she couldn’t really understand.
She opens her mouth, about to answer, when the sixth collision comes. Her two rows of her teeth hit each other and she lets out a painful groan.
“I told you: hold on tight and don’t answer!” the sphinx practically chirps loudly and Mist can’t help but doubt his intentions.
They have been plunging down the hollow trunk of the Holy Tree. The Tree itself is made of stone, or turned into stone - Mist couldn’t guess which of the two. Strange silver-blue light, nothing alike the soft moonlight, yet eerily resembling it, illuminates the walls and the dark unused protruding rough stairs. With these very stairs did Mound keep colliding with, to break their fall, he said, because jumping straight down would be fun but fatal even to “fragile carcasses with a soul”.
He flaps his wings a few times, slowing their fall again. Mist braces herself at the impact of the seventh collision. Snickering comes from the front, Mound seems to be amused. Without a moments loss, the Sphinx whirls around and leaps again, aiming for something in the murky darkness.
The way down would have taken hours by itself for her, Mist thinks. Looking up, she fails to find the entrance to the Celestial Palace, the way they came from. With the sphinx’s simple leaping around they are already half way down in the matter of minutes. Slight movements can be spotted above: Gust and Little Stream trying to keep up. For the next part of the plan to get her to the Ceremony, their talents are required. What exactly they had in store, she can’t even fathom.
The impact comes as a surprise and she almost slides off Mound’s bulky body. He doesn’t let her adjust her grip on him and instead leaps down again. Just a little more, Mist thinks. Her past military training and all those feats feel insufficient to her right now… Looking down, she sees a glimmer and smiles.
She recognizes it as the deep lake at the bottom, known and revered by both siren races as the Mother Source, which feeds every single water body in the world. What feeds the lake itself? No one really knows. Reaching that will mean the end of her journey with Mound. Something she just learned to crave desperately.
The sphinx notices what the valkyrie saw and his leaps become longer, the shock of the collisions stronger. But Mist could almost feel the end. Nine, she holds on tighter; ten, Mound whirls with so much force his tail tore off some of the vines on the wall; eleven, she almost flies forward as the sphinx makes an abrupt halt in mid-air, flapping his heavy wings twice before stopping completely. The twelfth never came, for both of them fall a leap’s distance into the deep waters of the Mother Source. Mist throws open her wings, but heavy paws descend onto its fragile structure - Mound has turned around midair and commenced holding her tight to his body with both front and hind paws.
This time the valkyrie finally understands the real meaning of “plunge”. She swears never to travel with the sphinxes again, no matter what… if they survive this one first.
The water surface feels like stone, unyielding and solid. Then right in the same second water gushes into her nose, down her lungs, seemingly burning and singeing everything on its path. She struggles against the slow sinking, but the strong paws keep restraining her. Did something happen to Mound? Why is he not swimming upwards? Fear strikes her: did he want her dead?
The moments fright disperses as Mound finally lets go. Mist doesn’t waste a seconds thought and quickly reaches the air above. She tries to spit the water out and allow the refreshing air into her system, she gasps and coughs, her thoughts scrambled together. She doesn’t understand, what is happening? Why did Mound try to kill her? Something in the back of her mind alarms her: he is still down there, ready to strike right-
“Take a deep breath!” Someone cries and Mist throws her face up at the source.
A pair of paws push her down from above, she fails to scream as water fills her mouth again. She almost blacks out, but her eyes bring up an alarming imagine: Little Stream, her contours washed away by water, and what seems like Gust and Mound behind her. The water currents, something the valkyrie didn’t notice at the start, sucks them forward slowly… or maybe quickly… Mist couldn’t tell, something doesn’t feel right, but she couldn’t get a hold of it, doesn’t have the strength left for it… She allows herself to drift off into darkness…
Back Continue