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37
THE DREADFUL PASS
Why does the cure for my distraught offspring not work, Shawmaow? Their eyes are glazing over.”
“Before I prescribe a different elixir, I must understand what happened to them, Kattsu.”
“Inexplicable terror grips their spirits. They keep insisting a monster dwells in a rocky shelter. The nearest unattended hollow mountains surround Draconis Lake. In their innocence, they lack both the motive and fortitude to stray so far. In any case, I am surprised they arrived home in their condition.”
The stumped curationist turned around as I walked over to them. “Here comes the Mandagral.”
Kattsu’s eyes shallowed as she turned away from me.
“All night, they slink around like tenderpaws, Mandagral.”
“What’s a tenderpaw?”
“A fearful leopard... Now, our family’s dishonor will shame me into hunting alone.”
“I’m going to remedy your problem.”
With one hand I supported my elbow, and the other, my chin. “Would they dare go to the Dreadful Pass?”
“All the adults warn them to stay away from those bone-chilling night horrors. What would possess them to go? Most of us would rather face a pack of rabid dograls.”
At Panthramura, I knelt eye-level with Kattsu’s three progeny. “Fear not, I will protect you.”
The leader’s leg muscles tightened as she prepared to run at the first hint of danger.
“Sir, I’m afraid. Please, take us faraway!” The other two echoed their sibling.
“Yes, over the horizon. When daylight arrives, he will come for us.”
“First, point me toward the brute.”
“East.” She quivered, all the while standing erect and wiping her tears.
“But we will not take you.”
“Abandon the thought. Still, I need you to sink your claws in. Together, we are going to drive out the jitters.”
With her back to a tree, still shaking, “I don’t want to stay here any longer, let’s go far away.”
“Whatever darkens your dreams will run from me. Hold on.” In an instant, all three clung to me.
Every noise made the youngest one flinch.
“Promise you will defend us.”
“Absolutely! Now, pray tell, who is Osera?”
“The underground fiend! Are you listening?”
“All right, you must embrace your prowess. Should you run from the Osera, he will extinguish you like the embers of a smoldering cooking fire. Your life depends on following my words. I will teach you how to avoid him. Say, ‘this growling pup is mine to banish. I own him.” Then, let the eyes of your mind scout the byway he took and discover he hightailed his sorry rear end out of here.
With a hesitating nod, “How can we believe these words?”
“First, empty yourselves of fear through meditation. Second, humble yourselves with devout requests for deliverance.”
After they assumed the position, they made an genuine effort. “This way?”
“Perfect. Extend both of your pointing claw. Now place the two sharp tips.”
“My nose itches, may I scratch?”
“Yes, my itchy one.”
“Mommeo, he called me, Itchy One. Is that my name?”
“No kitten. The Mandagral cannot give names. He doesn’t possess one.”
The youngest interrupted. “Ahem, I’m hungry.”
Still in her prayerful yoga pose the oldest used her commanding voice. “Sisters! We are trying to meditate. Please concentrate for the Mandagral!”
With reluctance, “OK.”
“Now, empty your minds.”
“Describe how your body reacted.”
They answered from youngest to oldest.
“My veins want to burst out of my arms.”
“My legs want to run, but they can’t.”
“Like a dark cloud with horrible eyes, he makes me shudder.”
“Now imagine a cool breeze, blowing the bad reactions out through your claw-tips. Next, point down the footpath. Imagine, Sora carries your trembles with him as he departs. Now, tell that mongrel ‘good-riddance’ as he vanishes, never to return.”
In unison, they waved with their arms in a victory V stance. “Good-riddance, Osera.”
“Now recall your most beautiful memory.”
In turn, their faces shone resplendent as each one spoke. “Sora No Megami.”
“My mommeo’s smile.”
“The shell of a huge turtle to play in.” The other two giggled.
“With furrowed eyebrows in retort, “...such a grand place to hide!” Her sister’s abrupt silence confirmed her idea.
“Next, fill your mind with pure, splendid fantasies...”
After a moment, they skipped around. “Thank you Mandagral, we are not scared anymore.”
The playmates stalked the holes in the wall for mousals. “Wonderful, Mandagral.”
“Your amazement may be premature, Shawmow. They might yet need the Ghost Petal Spore Serum.”
“Are they possessed?”
“Only two reasons exist for them to divulge an actual name. Either whatever scared them self-disclosed his name, or they reinvented a tale about Osera.”
“Whether myth or substance, we never fashioned such a name.”
“Well, I expected different descriptions of their malefactor, but not his identity. This detail tells me the object of their horror exists! Nevertheless, I must investigate. Give them the Ghost Petal Spore Serum without hesitation if they relapse. Never stop watching them, especially if they fall asleep at daybreak. Let’s hope I return early, Heaven willing.”
“Wait, I’m going with you, Mandagral.”
“Wouldn’t go without you, Gatta.”
“Not without me either, Mandagral.”
“Let’s do this, Yeowthera.”
“All this intensity indicates you’re up against a threat. Will you divulge the cause for your concern?”
“Yeowthera, according to the cubs, Osera, a paralyzing malevolence, infests their haunts.”
Gatta tilted her head and shrugged.
“No caves divert misguided travelers along the Dreadful Pass, but therein, the Hokan seals an impassable chasm. Constrained with unbreakable enchanted chains, our supreme deity quarantines horrific evils within. Ever since, Hi Gami’s champion stands guard. Our historians report, the gulf between this world and the nether realm restrains them. Indeed, the Creator herself erected the Hokan as a place to safeguard us from the heinousness she banished.”
She raised a suspicious eyebrow. “How did they meander inside?”
My informant closed her eyes. “Conflagration’s charge is not to obstruct anyone from getting in. The Fire God’s swift-winged fury prevents any immoral aberration from exiting! Insignificant, the youth would pass like ghosts. Chuckles would lighten his heart if he did spy on their idiotic daring.”
Gatta’s eyes twinkled with a stroke of genius. “Well, since the door presents no challenge, we need an evasion plan. One so happens to occupy my mind.”
“Your brain is as agile as your paws, Gatta. In the meantime, I must unearth what Osera fears.”
With a quizzical expression, Yeowthera puzzled over my scheme. “How?”
“Simple, I must figure out the method he uses to instill alarm. Likely, the first-born and the most formidable kind, he will implant rules the heart, unrivaled, the dread of the unknown. Without disclosing how, he terrified their little hearts of dying in a sleep time horror.”
“Remember this, Yeowthera, the dread of death wells up from one’s fears in life. A Mandragora who lives out her days to the fullest dies with assurance. If you harbor any doubts about your life, own them now.”
After a sober moment of silent introspection, Yeowthera stumbled over her sentence. “What else do you want us to do?”
“Osera will try to leverage both of you against me. Do not let any chilling sensation or any burning ideas influence you to take action.”
“Why?”
“Because, in the cases I mentioned, no matter which path you choose, you will take the one he wants.”
“Dare I ask how you know? Less than an hour ago, Osera did not inhabit this dimension of reality to anyone’s knowledge.”
“Sora No Megami opened my mind. In my former life, I gazed into an abyss and fought the malignancy occupying the depths. Let me skip ahead. She told me I must encounter Hi Gami. Ensure I arrive. Osera will contend for the title of the worst kind of demon.”
Gatta relaxed and sat down.
“Glad you figured this out. For a minute, my angst raised her ugly head. In case the scaled sentry outside tries to keep us, I’m going to devise an escape tactic.”
Mist crept along the ground halfway through the Dreadful Pass. Not a single animal ventured a sound. The night flowers withheld their brilliance.
Gatta blinked her eyes in recollection of a childhood story her mommeo once told. “Hokan means the place where evil is kept. The Ancients constructed the meter-thick walls of this place out of moonstone from the supernatural meteors of Sephoon. Nothing sentient can cross them.”
97Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1BIhSr3Gle
38
OSERA
Like a gigantic perch, the ominous archway of the Planetary Prison framed the skyline.
“The entrance resembles a cave in a cub’s eye. This is the right place,” I noted, “…well, the correct, wrong place.”
A sulfurous, rotten egg stench stifled the air. After a quick survey of the landscape, she spied the top of the vaulted fortress, Yeowthera squinted at a stark silhouette through the haze.
In a faint voice, Gatta felt relieved. “Conflagration sleeps.”
By sheer mākutu, we sneaked by unnoticed. Long dark corridors circled in both directions, echoing the smallest sounds. The massive incandescent symbols of the Fire God, which the Prime Deity embedded every two meters illuminated the smooth-finished masonry.
Other foreign artifacts and emblems intended as warnings glowed with an eerie hum. The powdery mildew, which drifted with the wind, disguised the recent scent of the young Mandragora. Tiny paw prints littered the dust on the overlaid floor. In one corner, the broken tiles revealed hardened sediment.
The voltage-like tension you get when you believe you are suddenly falling to your death seized my muscles.
“The Imprisoned One senses us. Yeowthera, please help Gatta.” As my two cohorts strode toward the exposed soil, I advanced down the foreboding corridor.
Dead center of the antechamber two obsidian obelisks powered a spherical distortion above an infinite fissure. Like an earthquake, my roar trembled the pebbles an inch off the ground.
“Osera!”
An ethereal image phased inside the contorted portal. From another extent of time and space, the most horrifying apparition materialized from the pitch-black.
Rounded bark-like shoulders faded behind, into the blackness. The outline of a tail dissipated above his head. Gnarly, stout vines of spectral protoplasm fated the entity’s body.
Osera stared at me with his etched, ghoulish face and gaped his cavernous mouth. An upper row of one-inch pointy pearl teeth and a foot-long fleshy shaft slithered from his grimaced face. He probed the tongue-like organ toward me. My body froze and my eyes locked on the squirming appendage, which tasted the air.
The deficiency of nasal tissue and cartilage exaggerated the gaping nostrils intruding into his grazed skull. Thin, elvish ears twitched, protruding from the back of his jaw. Dead, asymmetrical eyes fixed on me. Like a botched jack-o-lantern, the right eye appeared vacant. The left, beady unblinking one glazed-over with a pale squash colored film.
Osera’s macabre resonance shuttered the ground.
“Each drudging hour transpired like an eternity without you.” Scrambling to understand, I seamed my lips in a straight line. “The bewilderment you would conceal hides in plain view on your face. Granted, my appearance must appear just as strange to you as yours does to me.”
My thoughts ran wild, searching for answers. The mesmerizing effect of his eyes spun me lightheaded. Such a gruesome spectacle never interrupted my spirit at a primeval level. “I must focus and not give away any secrets.”
“I realized you anticipated me.”
“Impressive, you did not lose your edge. Let me propose an exchange of wits. With the provision you do not mind, I will go first, since you are reluctant. Do you agree?”
“Should I concur with you, we will both, no doubt, suffer. Against my better judgment, I consent to your taunt.”
“Consider this: Hmm, what if ruthlessness translates into decisiveness? Uh-hmm, what if fearlessness equals coolness under pressure? What if manipulation corresponds with charisma? Ah yes, what if a deficit of empathy, an absence of moralizing becomes the same as objectivity, uh-huh? What would result?”
“How obvious, you seek to misguide me with false presuppositions. Am I stupid? In all seriousness, would you use circular logic? Your vocal pauses are an attempt to sound human. With relational words, you suggest we are similar, if not identical. Your cold, self-interest in swaying people, your disinterest in understanding them, and your muted morality all oppose calmness under stress. Your deceptive appeal displays detachment, fraudulence, and antisocial behavior. Would I forget so soon how you alarmed the curious kittens in such a brief time? Why should I trust you now?”
“Unstoppable, not so long ago, you and I trusted each other.”
“Quit redirecting! Would you concern your empty conscience with ethics?”
“Unimpeachable, we arbitrated right and wrong above the system, correcting illicit affairs in the wake of ineptitude.”
“Stop saying ‘we’ and answer. Would you turn my friends against me?”
“How about I rescue them? A malicious entity, even now, plans to conceal itself among the denizens of this world. Help you, I will, to prevent his disaster in the making.”
“No distractions! What if you discerned my feelings?”
“If? Your emotional state exists in the glass house I built. In evidence, I will prove my resolve. One of the adorable felines will now die. Do not extricate me and the other two will join her on Sephoon.”
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