The Gelert’s Mark: Part Three by battlesunn |  |
Untitled Document
I could feel the excitement welling up inside me like
a balloon Shelly and I crouched in a patch of bushes outside Calypso's NeoHome,
waiting for Team Alpha to arrive. However, after waiting for two hours with
a complete lack of action, I began to lose some enthusiasm. Attempting vainly
to rub some feeling back into my numb legs, my brain began to swim with worrisome
thoughts and questions.
"What is we picked the wrong house? What if
the pattern was just a big coincidence? What if we had already missed them?…"
And so on. I was just about to voice these fears to Shelleylou when she suddenly
turned to me, paw to her lips and hissing a soft warning to shut up. She pointed
one of her long, ribbony ears in the direction of the sparkling mansion and
I immediately saw what she was so excited about.
Three Gelerts. One gold, a female, I presumed,
judging by the many glittering earrings and bracelets that encrusted her paws,
ears and tail. Another, silver colored, whose fur shone dully in the milky moonlight,
and the last, his fur a dark, charcoal black, like Shelly’s, but with evil looking
yellow eyes, blood-flecked and glinting with malice. Luckily, none of them had
seen us, but they were eyeing the mansion with interest and hunger. Out
of the corner of my eye I noticed the silver one grabbing rare garden gnomes
and stuffing them into a ratty brown bag that was slung over his shoulder.
The gold tipped her glittering muzzle
to the sky and grinned, showing off a set of perfect, pearly white teeth. She
gestured to the shadowed with her tail, who nodded and tapped the silver on
his head. In perfect, almost synchronized movements, the Gelerts snaked across
the lawn, darting behind shrubbery and staying in the shadows. The only way
to determine exactly where they were was by their eyes, bright and flashing
with malice in the darkness.
The trio made their way to the East wall
of the mansion, where the shadowed, who was easily the most lithe and sinewy
of the three, rubbed his paws with some sort of white powder and leapt up on
the wall. His claws found every crack and flaw in the golden walls as he worked
his way up the mansion. Shelly and I watched in fascination as he climbed higher
and higher up the wall, until he became no more than a black speck in the distance.
Finally, he reached the top, and tossed a long rope down, the thick knot at
the end bouncing on the golden walls as it careened down to the ground.
The silver caught the rope in his mouth,
rubbed his paws with the powder, and began his descent up the rope. After a
few minutes, the gold followed suit, shimmying her way up, pausing every now
and then to glance fretfully over the edge. I smirked, she must have been afraid
of heights. Once they were out of hearing range, I caught Shelly's attention
and quickly rasped out our plan, my voice a low whisper.
"You know the plan, Shelly. When they
come back down, I'll capture one of them, and you follow after the remaining
two. Pretend that you want to join them. Get as much information as you can
and relay it back to me via walkie-talkie." I clasped her shadowed paw in my
claws. "Good luck, Shelly."
Shelly nodded, her midnight black face
slightly paler than usual, though her expression was still firm and resolute.
"You too, Ez."
We sat in silence; our eyes focused on
the wall. The Gelerts had been gone for about half an hour, and would be coming
back down any minute. At last, I saw an all too familiar golden form travelling
slowly down the rope, slightly lopsided due to the huge sack of loot that she
had slung over her shoulder. Not too long afterwards, the silver and the shadowed
Gelerts came down the rope, also carrying large sacks of booty. I heard a low
growl emanating from Shelly's throat, as she pawed the ground angrily. I shuddered
inwardly; this was what Shelly always did to pump herself up for a tough Battledome
fight. I too began mentally preparing myself for the task ahead, taking a deep
breath as my eyes caught a telltale golden glimmer as the female Gelert came
trotting softly by.
I was just about to jump out and catch
her, but Shelly held me back. I instantly saw why; I wouldn't have made it in
time to take her by surprise. Instead, I set my sights upon the silver, who
was padding closer and closer to the bushes where Shelly and I were concealed.
I mustered up all my strength and jumped out, whacking the Gelert across the
head with my heavily scaled tail. He fell limply to the ground, knocked out.
I grinned toothily at Shelly, expecting her to give me the thumbs up sign, but
instead she growled at me and quickly hissed, "The shadowed one is coming! Get
back here!"
Coming back to my senses with a jolt,
I grabbed the unconscious Gelert around his silver forepaws and dragged him
into the bushes, covering him up with the surrounding foliage. I made it just
in time. Before I could blink, the shadowed Gelert came tearing past; his yellow
eyes filled with venom as his paws tore in the ground, glancing occasionally
back behind him. Shelly gave me one last goodbye nod, and jumped over the hedge
to follow the rapidly diminishing Gelerts.
I sighed with relief, pleased at how well
the plan had gone, giving the silver Gelert at my feet a disgusted look. I was
just about to settle down for a quick nap when my ears caught the sound of an
enraged human, headed my way. Ah, so that was why the shadowed Gelert
had been running so fast, and looking fearfully over his shoulder. The supposedly
flawless Gelerts had made one little error, and had awakened the owner, who
was coming after them with a vengeance. I took a deep breath, and ran as fast
as my legs could carry me, which was considerably slower since I was dragging
ninety pounds of Gelert behind me.
Still, I made it away from the mansion,
and managed to drag the Gelert into an abandoned cave. By now, all my earlier
fatigue had been forgotten. Now, I was only concerned with squeezing as much
information out of this Gelert as I could. There was only one small problem;
he had been knocked out stone cold, and wasn't going to come back to for awhile.
So, to pass the time, I decided to paw though the Gelert's bag of loot.
Apparently, the Gelerts had stolen much
more than a cool negg. I found quite a few rare plushies, a paint brush here
and there, and, what was this? I had come across the strange looking medallion,
made from solid gold, but with a magnificent gem set in the middle, which swirled
with rainbow colored vapors. I knew what it was. Shelly had often spoken of
it in a wistful tone, usually mentioning it just to say how much she wanted
one.
It was a rainbow swirly thing, a wonderful,
and very rare, Hidden Tower Item that possessed the power to hypnotize someone
at a second's notice.
I looked from the medallion in my claws
to the Gelert on my left, and back again. I grinned slightly, twirling the medallion
around my claws by its thin golden chain. I sat down opposite to the Gelert,
watching him contemptuously, keeping the rainbow swirly thing at ready. I heard
a low moan emanate from the Gelert's mouth, and saw him stirring slightly. He
had awakened....
To be continued...
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