A Ripple In The Void[part 3]

The conversation between the father and his son came to an abrupt halt due to the noise of someone's footsteps. Dark was the hour and vigilence is often our visage when someone enconters something dark and unknown.

"Go on i want to hear what happens next." said the man whose silhouette was becoming more tangible along with his voice.

"Uncle Amiri, you scared the widdle out of me!" said Hermes, to the man with a sickly countenance.

cough cough "That was my intention, it does feel divine to scare the sacredly cats of this world. Young Hermes, would you be a good child and leave me and your father alone for a moment."

Hermes then looked at his father. Seeing that his father was irked for some reason, Hermes did not speak and waited for his fathers permission. His father looked at him and said "Go on, go meet your friend at the bazaar, the legend of the man with the Abachi Mask will have to wait."

"Tomorrow then, please don't forget this time." Hermes got up as soon as he said these words and put those pages full of patterns deep into his pocket and hurried out of the room, almost with a visage of a flying squirrel.

The man named Amiri chuckled at this sight, but suddenly he then stopped smiling, as the room was tinged with a horrible chill. Amiri did not even had to look where this, spine rendering aura was coming from as he was still watching Hermes waddle his way out the house.

"I told you not to visit me during the dark." spoke the man grimly.

"You are too paranoid Zeno and please do something about that aura unless you want my blood all over your innocent child's room." said Amiri in a fickle way as he looked around the room.

"So what brings you here at this hour?" said Zeno, who was clearly irked by something. Zeno has known this man for twenty odd years and never has won at any form of discourse with this sickly, grimly man. Everytime he met this man, something in his memory echoed, it was one of his father's sayings 'NEVER TRUST A SOPHIST, FOR THEY SHED THEIR SKIN MORE OFTEN THAN A SNAKE'. But he also heared the phrase that says 'do not judge a book by its cover'. It was this indecisiveness due two clashing morals that laid the foundation for their friendship, for he believed that a man that looked that slimy couldn't be a man of low honor.

"Is your wife here?" asked Amiri

"No, she is out, preparing for the Lunar-Dust festival." said Zeno.

" Then we can talk freely. I met with the boys yesterday, they are a little anxious." said Amiri.

"They should be anxious, this is not child's game, one wrong move and everything and everyone they care about will be wiped out of existence." spoke Zeno grimly.

"And thus the reason i came here despite your warnings." said Amiri

"Talk!" exclaimed Zeno.

"If we keep on waiting the people might back out, or worse turn traitor. Fear is the chief motivator for men like them, we do not know what might happen ten days from now they might back out, die, or maybe even the world might stop moving. The world is already too murky and grey for them, the more fear takes over the further their mind will be from sanity. So me and some of the others who are smart enough to see this peril before it blooms, decided to move up our schedule." said Amiri

"We are the children of the mines, so how can you condemn your fellow brothers and sisters that way." said Zeno in anger.

"Brother Zeno, we may be the children of the mines but you are not. So please dont talk to me about the nature of my brothers and sisters. We are born among DUST and soon we will become DUST. But you're different, you are niether like us nor you're like the Immortals. You are . . . . ." Amiri stoped speaking as he was gestured to stop by Zeno.

"You know i don't think that way, igrew up with you, i worked in the mines with you, i even . . . ." Zeno was interrupted by a loud noise and he then looked up into pitched black skies and saw the skies getting filled with silvery Lunar-Dusts. The Lunar-Dusts danced accross the skies and then started taking different shapes of animals, first it was a beetle, then a wolf, then an ancient tree, and finally a raven, which completed this mystical cycle.

". . . . I even watched these fetes, which gives me peace and makes me tranquil alongside you all, so how can you say that i am not of you." lamented Zeno.

"Then help us, you know that we deserve better than the miniscule amount of subsistence we are getting. This is as far as we can go playing on pathos, we need to take a stand, and for that you are the only one who is absolutely vital for our rise; because of your Anti-Halo Arts, we could be actually be succesful in this endeavour.". said Amiri vehemently.

Zeno was in an emotional bind, as being someone who lived through the last Mystic-Plague, he knew the effects of fear on people; he knew that fear does not discriminate, sometimes the kings are even more affected than their subjects. It either takes all or none.

"Give me a day to think about it." said Zeno, after much deliberation.

"Well, you can take all the time you need, but we are hitting the stronghold at the same time the Lunar-Oblation starts, we think, no, we believe, that the stronghold will be ripe and ready for us at that hour. " said Amiri as he gets up to leave.

"What are you people thinking! to do it today, of all days." said Zeno.

"It will work because of whats today, element of surprise still works in this realm, last time i checked. Anyway, we will wait for you till midnight and then. . . . . we will move." said Amiri as he walked into the dewey darkness leaving Zeno alone with his tumultuous sea of thoughts.