Tempest Gate

Behind Blue Eyes

-Part 1: The Tempest Gate-

Like a drop of blood over alabaster skin, the fox fled across the desert.

Burnt coal paws glided effortlessly along the worn line of indentation, all that was left of an ancient coach-road that once ran through this dry country. Any scant tracks she might have left in the alkali were quickly torn away by gyrating dust devils as they danced across the hardpan to heavy metal only they could hear. The fox did not tarry, for there is nothing so dangerous as that apocalyptic waste. Nothing so exposed as that stony face.

As the sun began to wester, the fox crested a long eroded dune and came upon a scrub flat that littered the desert in much the way that foamy white caps litter the sea. The scrub brush was little more than yellowed timothy and the occasional stunted twist of devil grass, but it was here that she first began to smell something other than the arid desert. Faint but lush, the sweet scent of dark foliage began to infuse the air with a rich moisture. On the far bank of the scrub, she could just make out the green of real grass, and beyond, the decadent dark of the forest. She would reach it by sunset, if not a little before.

Wandering into the scrub, still following the remnant track of the old coach-road, the fox began to feel she was being watched. No, that wasn't accurate; the sensation was of predominant lurking. Slowing momentarily and turning back her ears gave her an almost cowering look, but it made picking up faint noises in her back trail elementary. She was being hunted. He produced no discernable sound, but she sensed his very masculine presence looming in her lengthening shadow. A sly smile stole across her narrow face as she thought:

Follow the leader? Do you dare?

He was hunting, and she would surely lead, but perhaps not where he expected.

The sun gilded the tops of the forest trees just as the fox slowed to a trot, moving quite casually into the deepening shadows. Her footfalls were muffled by dry nettles and plush patches of moss. The trees here grew tall, their canopies dense, leaving little sunlight for any shrubbery to grow below them. Her pursuer might use this growing darkness to close the distance, but rather than be distressed, she welcomed it. The coach track had all but vanished, and of the two of them, she alone knew their course. Tossing her head, she continued to smile her sly smile.

As the sun settled on the horizon and threw the forest into stripes of dark amber and umbra, the fox found herself ascending rolling hills that were gradually becoming steeper. Trudging higher and higher with each hill, she felt the air grow exponentially more frigid.

The sky melted from amber to heliotrope as the sun sank below the horizon, and a howl halted her forward progress. The sound, the tortured cry of a lonely soul become a song, reverberated through the still dark of the wood... But was that cry a welcome or a warning?

As the echoes died away, the fox moved forward again, but this time with more alacrity. Soon enough, a whiff of sandalwood and oil pervaded her senses; an alien fragrance in this wilderness, giving caution. This rapidly became overlaid by the heavy redolence of burnt gunpowder, which caused her nose to wrinkle and her upper lip to draw back in a way that would have been comic under other circumstances.

As the smells grew more potent, a roan wolf loomed out of the darkness on her left.

Lean, agile, and deceptively resilient, the wolf ran alongside the fox. The wolf hurdled fallen trees and bounded over trenches faster and more easily, having far more experience in this bailiwick. Her vivid red fur, more resembling blood than the bright carmine of the fox, became even more striking as they cleared the top of a hill and suddenly found themselves in several inches of crisp white snow. The new texture beneath her feet slowed the fox, but the wolf continued on unabated. The wolf knew the landscape far better than the fox and was able to navigate the hills and gullies more efficiently, leaving the fox behind in her white powdery snow dust.

The fox had not feared the wolf's approach, nor her subsequent and swift departure, for they had met before. She was also not alone there in the snow. Her pursuer was still hot on her trail.

Maybe not quite so hot now.

The fox grinned at the thought.

At the bottom of the following hill, the trail of the old coach-road became visible again at a worn sign post. She could just make out, through the gloom of the deepening night, the word "

Empathica

" etched into the broken cross-piece at the top. A thought rang in her mind, like a memory or a nearly forgotten dream. Was it something she had read before? Was it something someone had said?

The White Lands of Empathica... The White Lands of Empathica...

It raced itself around her mind in loops as she toiled up the last escarpment before the path leveled out. As the trees began to thin toward a sky-lit clearing, she finally remembered.

These lands... This place... These

are

The White Lands of Empathica.

Upon entering the clearing, the temperature dropped even further, and the fox found herself on the edge of a frozen black lake, it's glassy surface laced with thin mist. On the far bank was a figure perched above the lake, cantilevered out on a sloping concrete pedestal. She had no discernable scent and appeared to be chiseled from the top of the pedestal on which she sat. The toes of her bare feet, just barely visible below the gathered hem of her long, loose, robes, floated unmoving a few inches above the lake's onyx surface.

Great falcon wings, a darker shade of the same concrete grey, sprouted from between the figure's shoulder blades and spread around her, sheltering her from the bitter winter wind and the gently falling snow. Her robes, belted at the waist with dark grey cord, culminated in a deep hood, completely masking her features and giving the impression that, in lieu of a face, there was only tenebrous darkness. She loomed over what was nearly the center of the lake.

Looking directly into the lake would have been disastrous. The fox realized this only after she had gone about half of the way around. Hypnotic images shimmered on its surface, centered just below the statuesque figure, as if the lake were a gigantic looking glass. The fox caught only glimpses: herself in the desert, a white computer screen with words marching from one side to the other, a messy bed with four orange kitty cats lounging in various areas, a field that somehow didn't look real, fuzzy and distorted as if in a dream. The dizzying array beckoned her, luring her to the steely edge of the water. The fox tore her eyes away just in time to see the figure above the images turn its faceless countenance toward her with the grinding of heavy stone.

Frozen by sudden abject terror, the fox was helpless when the massive wings whipped back and then plunged forward, buffeting the air into an icy blast that knocked the fox backwards off her feet and into a embankment of snow. The fox lay there for a moment, stunned by both the cold of the snow and the detached malice of the attack. Getting to her feet again, she shook off the snow and crawled back up to the path along the edge of the lake.

The black blank stare was still upon her, but the figure was now on its feet, standing on the forward edge of the pedestal. The images below her had vanished; the lake was an onyx mirror. The figure held in her hands an ornate ebony scythe that had not been there before.

A voice, as icy as the lake, entered the fox's mind, completely bypassing her ears.

~Newcomer, you dare to bring an outsider into this realm.~

The figure shifted, stretching her wings to their full span, and then folding them around her shoulders once more.

~

Should he bring upheaval and malaise to any within the Mind Castle, know that the price paid will be your identity.~

The fox gulped frosty air, her grey eyes like saucers in the moonlight. She didn't need further explanation from the figure to know it meant her existence as anything more than the memory of a passing phase.

The figure continued to stand menacingly, weapon in hand, but turned her attention in the direction from which the fox had come; outbound of the old coach-road, to the north. The fox mused only briefly what her hunter would make of this strange guard before taking advantage of the distraction and scampering onward.

Passed the lake, in the middle of the clearing, was the crumbling structure of a once ornate mausoleum, the entryway partially open and cobwebbed as though permanently stuck that way, but free of snow because of the roof's overhang.

The entrance itself was plenty wide for such a small creature to slip inside and down the three steps to the floor. It was gloomy and dry, and would have plunged her into complete darkness if not for an unusual glow emanating from within a propped open sarcophagus at the far end of the room. The fox walked over cautiously and leapt up onto the edge to investigate. To her surprise, she found a narrow set of stairs leading down and continuing south, away from the mausoleum. She leapt into the sarcophagus and began the long journey toward the dim glow of golden light.