Chapter 9
Illusions, pt 2
The waves looked like they were carved from crystals from this far above, gleaming like flawless sapphires in the afternoon sun. The foam churned up by the progress of the boat(for it was a boat at that moment) looked like sparkling diamonds sprinkled across water of gleaming aquamarine. The sky was a picturesque shade of azure. The sun glowed down, pleasantly warm and perfectly complementing the crisp sea breeze.
Zira leaned out from the watchtower’s rope ladder(the one that led up to the very tip of the mast, not the one below it that went to second, smaller level of mainmast watchtower) and stared out over the horizon. Blue, blue, and more blue stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see.
Earlier on that day(their second aboard the boat)they had reached the Isle of the Sandspiders. It had been early in the morning(just after the crack of dawn, actually) and no Sandspiders were visible - the theory was, at that time, that the dragons were not early risers. However, there was absolutely no sound at all on the island, and when Chicken and Rhiannon carefully ventured into the tunnels to check on the dragons, the underground caves were empty.
After conducting two or so hours of searching, the questing team had finally decided that the Sandspiders were most definitely not on the island. If they had had more time, they might have searched more extensively, but they had a problem to solve.
That led to a few more hours of sailing, reminiscent of the previous day: blue sky, blue sea, blue ship(Okay, not really. The vessel could camouflage and turn blue, but at the present it was just a regular white-with-green-trim ship), all blue in all directions.
During the previous day, in any of the lulls in the researching they did, Zira had explored the entire ship, except for Cargo Bay 2, which was off-limits for some unknown reason, and the Control Center, because Chicken had said that the room had some complicated mechanics that would put the ship on immediate lockdown if an unfamiliar person came aboard who wasn’t registered in the database. When Rhiannon had asked her why they couldn’t go on, seeing as they had been ‘registered’ during their first day, Chicken had quickly changed the subject.
During this time, she had also found a number of small hiding places on the ship - or at least, some places where no one ever went. Sadly, the mainmast was not one of those places.
“BAWK! Good afternoon, Miss Shadow.”
Chicken zipped up, using her jetpack. Zira tilted her head, considering that.
“Why don’t you fly, Chicken?”
She knew it was a little desperate, but she wanted to focus the conversation on something mundane instead of the book she knew Chicken might have seen hidden on the mainmast. And besides, she was curious.
“I do fly. I just did.”
“No, not with your jetpack. I mean, some chickens can fly, right?”
Chicken clucked thoughtfully. “Can we…?”
“Some chickens can. But Race to the Edge chickens...they look like modern farm chickens, and farm chickens cannot fly well. But then you don’t look like a Race to the Edge chicken.”
Chicken puffed out her feathers. “Thank you.”
She paused, the feathers deflating. “I think.”
“Don’t worry, my fine feathered friend, it was a compliment. So, what calls you to the mainmast just before lunch? I thought you would be staking out your claim on the best birdseed.”
In truth, this wasn’t necessary, since the ship had already been stocked with enough food for all, plus the fact that no one else onboard ate birdseed, but it was a precaution and one that Chicken liked to take.
Chicken cracked her neck threateningly, a gesture that looked slightly deranged on the bird. “No. No one takes the birdseed without me knowing. Anyways, I’m calling a meeting in the Sea Spray Room of Conferencing On Waves. Taking place immediately.”
“Well, I shall be arriving immediately!” Zira grinned and stood up, surreptitiously pushing the book into the final notch of hiding space on the mainmast. She ran to the edge and leaped off, landing on the second level, and then again to the first. She began to descend the rope ladder while Chicken dove off the tip in jetpack-aided flight. Zira followed her to the conference center, but just as she was about to go inside, something caught her eye. She looked to see an ominous gray storm front looming behind them, quickly catching up.
It wasn’t anything too odd. Storms happened all the time at sea, and it wasn’t like they weren’t prepared. Zira tried to shake off the chill as she went inside. It seemed to work, but still, something pulled at her within that stormcloud. Something was not normal, not as usual. Something was wrong.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
It was a rare occasion when Zira Shadow was right. Usually, it would have been a good thing, but she now found herself praying(although to who or what she didn’t know)that she wasn’t. So of course, the one time that she actually wanted to be wrong, she was right. Situational irony, anyone?
Inside the Sea Spray Room of Conferencing on Waves(it seemed the Riders had a flair for really long names), the entirety of the questing group met up. Eira was fidgeting with a random small stone. Rhiannon was tapping her shoe tips together, her fingers tapping out rhythms on the curving table. Zira herself was playing air piano (Pachelbel's Canon in D) and occasionally popping and unpopping her fingers in her hypermobility - a nervous habit that served to make others just as nervous as well.
Chicken held court from atop a raised white, blue-cushioned platform in the inside curve of the pale teal-gray crescent-shaped table - her ‘chair’. The rest of the questers sat in white chairs with the same wavy design on the back(albeit vertical) and built-in teal/cornflower blue cushions.
“So,” started Chicken. “You’re probably wondering why I w’kaw-lled you here today. Don’t say it,” she added, looking at Rhiannon, who had just opened her mouth. Evidently she decided not to say anything and closed it again.
“What are the buttons for?” Eira asked, prodding the sky-blue lightbulb-shaped button carefully. There was one on the armrest of each of the seats.
“Ideas,” Chicken said vaguely. “So anyways, we’re here to over-bkook the course of the journey.”
A screen lit up behind her, showing a map of a large green dot labeled ‘Start’ and a dotted line, weaving drunkenly between what seemed like an obstacle course of islands and then a small indigo dot labeled ‘Destination’. A teal dot blinked on and off, closer by far to the ‘start’ - this was their ship.
“The map says it - b’kaw! - all,” Chicken told them confidentially, even though there was no one there, “But it’s still - BAWK!”
Now, on a regular basis, you wouldn’t expect anyone - not even a half-British chicken - to randomly break into a startled chicken-screech as Chicken did then, but the questers were a little too preoccupied to comment on the oddity. The ship had rocked, suddenly, violently, and with a sinking feeling, Zira thought that she was right: the storm had arrived.
They ran above deck, she near the front. It was raining, water hammering down in miserable pale sheets. Lightning flashed in stony gray clouds, and as the thunder rolled, Zira had a momentary flashback to the spring storms back home -
A dark shape swooped out of the rainy haze, slicing the air so fast it was impossible to see what it was, or even where it had come from. It disappeared a heartbeat later, vanishing into the convenient fog created by the sea storm. Eira lobbed something at the mist out of her magic bag - a paperweight, maybe? It crashed into the ocean.
Zira readied the four rubber balls to bounce whenever the - thing - would show up again, but it didn’t. There were no warning sounds, no dark swooping object. It had disappeared into the fog.
The Canon was slowly drifting towards a thick patch of fog - unanchored and without a destination, the currents and winds pushing it towards a dark, looming shape getting closer and closer each second.
The ship bumped into a shoreline: rocky, gravelly, with a small scattering of sand here and there. The fog closed back over the mouth of the cove they were in. As they watched, the dark shape swooped
All eyes turned to Chicken, who shrugged. “We’ll go forward, then.”
Eira opened the latch on the rail and they watched as the ship became a submarine once more. They descended into a relatively shallow area, then climbed ashore through another tunnel-like structure by the periscope hatch. It deposited them rather unceremoniously on a large, flat boulder.
The island they were on wasn’t particularly striking: plain stone, dull grayish sand, sickly green leaves on faded beige trees. However, it was what was built on the island that caught the questers’ attention. A giant wall, facing them, made of a dark black-gray, glistening type of rock(smoky quartz, it seemed), had a thin slot cut in it, stopping halfway up to create a sort of rectangular archway. Then more walls. And more, and more. They were standing before a giant maze.
The Canon was nothing but a speck of silvery metal underwater. From far beyond the gray maze, a flash of light in a brooding, dark cloud caught their attention. A flash of déjà vu slapped her upside the head: Pay attention. This is important, it seemed to say.
But...why?
Chicken tentatively placed a feather on the gray stone, which shimmered and shifted like a mirage. It was dangerous, that much was obvious, but they would go through. They had to. Without a word, they all instinctively knew: to get an answer, they’d have to go inside...and make it out alive.

So now I'm splitting chapterhalves into more parts! Yay! Not really...
And if anyone's wondering, after months of agony and torturous trying-to-make-desicions, I have decided to continue this story, albeit slower b/c of schooooool.

Is sounds much older than am here now. XD

Bridge 9-10
Puppet
He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up under the Nightmare’s thumb again, but it didn’t really come as a surprise to him. It had taken quite a few weeks’ time to convince the shadowy puppeteer that he could work just as well, if not better, if he was a rogue fighter - a ‘lone wolf’ - from the ranks of the Nightwake, the other poor brainwashed souls, although when the time came Nightmare seemed almost glad to release his mind. Maybe he was a little harder to control, simply because of the incompatibility of his gift and the Nightmare’s. Maybe that was why he could always think clearly, even fully controlled by the Nightmare as he was now.
Of course, the Nightmare could make him do anything even without the mind-control bit. As long as his sister lived, the Nightmare could make him do anything at all.
Well, that was a depressing thought. And it was, considering how much he’d done to avoid interactions with them in any way at all. Even his chosen codename - another odd example; as far as he was aware, the Nightmare didn’t like his soldiers to be identified - was specifically meant as a you-don’t-know-me sort of thing: Enigma. It wasn’t like him to stand by, though, so again: not really a surprise that he would find a way to betray the Nightmare.
Where was he? He wasn’t quite sure, but it was dark and altogether cramped. Every step he took sent agony racing up through every vein, every nerve, every major artery. He couldn’t stop walking.
Thanks for the support, buddy, but could you -
No, snapped the Nightmare before he could finish. You have betrayed me...Enigma.
He tried to send the Nightmare the mental notion of a shrug - what would that look like, an emoticon? Don’t tell me you didn’t see that coming.
Silence. Unreadable as usual.
I am taking back my control. You have proven yourself untrustworthy.
Oh, no, not untrustworthy! It’s not like I didn’t volunteer of this of my own free will, actually want you to fail, and don’t care what you think. Enigma tried to look around, but the Nightmare kept his head fixed straight ahead.
You will care, soon enough, care enough to act. Or at least, I will act...through you.
You can’t control my mind. At least that was true.
As long as they all live, I control you. And now we have another variable.
I’m willing to die to stop you, Nightmare.
Are you now, valiant Enigma? How convenient. I’m willing to kill you to succeed.
We’ll see which one of us lives, then, when the time comes, he thought, reaching the end of the dark passage.
That we will, my puppet, that we will.