The Dragon Knight; The Secrets of the Desert

The Secrets of the Desert (Chapter 18)

Sofia shuffled around uncomfortably. She shouldn’t be here; she no longer belonged here. She was living and breathing now, she was no longer dead; she shouldn’t be here. And yet she still was, and there was no apparent way out.

It was a curious thing; she couldn’t remember dying. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she had. At the same time, she couldn’t remember the first she had died either. Maybe no one ever remembered dying, even if it was a painful one you couldn’t imagine not remembering. And yet, looking around her at all the deceased, no one seemed to remember that they had died. Sure, they all knew that they were dead but no one remembered what had killed them.

No one wondered about how it happened either, and that was, Sofia decided, the difference between them and her.

The longer she walked around amongst the dead though, the more she wondered about where Ahiga was. She could feel her dragon close by and yet she could see the massif great beast. And the longer she was there walking around in the land of the dead, the more she wanted to know why she was there in the first place.

She kept on walking endlessly and just as she was about to drop down into the grass from annoyance and to rest, a bright light appeared in front of her. She had spent enough time here to know that it was a God or a Goddess, maybe, if she was lucky enough, it might even be an Element. But as the light faded, Sofia was surprised to find herself face to face with the moon Goddess.

Sofia had never had the pleasure of meeting the moon Goddess, Tien wasn’t the Goddess Sofia worshipped after all. However, that didn’t change the fact that she bowed as soon as the light had faded.

“No need for this, Knight, I come to you for help,” Tien told the blond knight, who straightened up with a confused expression on her face. “Walk with me first, there is someone we need to go and see first.”

Even more confused, Sofia followed behind the moon Goddess. She could see why she was referred to as the moon; the woman glowed with a silvery light, her hair an almost colorless blonde. Even Varteni’s hair held more color than hers. The veils of her dress floated after her, each one carried by its own breeze.

As they went, the surroundings because familiar to Sofia and she got the sneaky suspicion about where the Goddess was taking her. She had been to this part often, discussing and reassuring the young woman who lived in the house up ahead. There were many, many houses in the place where the dead went, but you could never see more than a few miles radius so it always appeared fairly empty.

The house that appeared in front of them though was a stately manor made out of dark stone. It was only a replica of a house down in the land of the living but it was an exact replica, just the way the owner wanted it. In front of the house, the flowers bloomed and a dark haired young woman was tending to them. The longer Sofia looked at the woman from where they were standing the more familiar she became to the Knight. Sure, it hadn’t been that long since they had seen each other but it sure felt like it.

“Why are we here?” Sofia asked, suddenly wary of why the Goddess had wanted to see her in particular and why she had brought her here. The moon Goddess only barely paused, looking back at the blond Knight.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a sigh, probably having guessed what Sofia was worried about. “I am not here for whatever plan you have tried to make. I sought you out and brought you here because I need help, help that the two of you can provide for me.”

“So, I’m not really dead again, am I?”

“No, I simply called you back here because your friend can’t go back to the land of the living. Besides, your dragon isn’t here, is he? I thought Knights and dragons couldn’t be separated by death.”