Midnight over Meridell: Part Two

We scurried around our room, picking up things that we had bothered to unpack. BUREUNIKONE feverishly shoved everything into his Beauty Care Kit while hastily trying to comb his mane at the same time, and nobody seemed to notice the vast amount of trinkets I had nicked from various other passengers with the help of 'Steal This Book'.

      "Do you guys have everything?" I barked after five tedious minutes of exaggerated packing.

      "Yes," everyone replied.

      "Good, let's move!" I said, striding out of the room with my pets at my heels. Even after being docked for roughly five minutes, there were still quite a few passengers waiting to disembark. Five more minutes afterwards, we were being pushed and jostled as pets and owners, all armed with heavy suitcases or something of that sort, attempted without success to move in all directions at once. The outcome was that everyone kept walking into one another, and several times I had to grab either Opessenc, Eralta or Alkarasydes to stop them being separated (BUREUNIKONE hovered overhead). Finally, we managed to extract ourselves from the crowd (mob to be more precise) and hurried away as fast as we could - Eralta was sporting a nosebleed, Opessenc had a black eye and Alkarasydes was missing a chunk of ice that I managed to save. And all these injuries were sustained from the same thing - walking into someone's luggage.

      "Very careful, I see," I said - typical me, making cheap jokes even in the worst of times. Eralta snorted in disbelief, droplets of blood spraying out, Alkarasydes rubbed the area of back where the piece of ice I was carrying previously sat, and Opessenc glared at me out of his normal, undamaged eye.

      "Let's just get to an inn," he growled. BUREUNIKONE sighed and landed next to him. His horn glowed for a second, and he tapped Opessenc on the eye with it. It healed instantly.

      "I really wish you'd tell me about these powers you have," I sighed as BUREUNIKONE conjured a bandage for Eralta's nose, and a tube of Unaffected-by-Water-and-or-Ice-Superglue for Alkarasydes' ice.

      "I don't know I have them until you say that I do," BUREUNIKONE said firmly.

      "What do you mean?" I asked uncomfortably, looking around as though a secret agent was following us.

      "I mean, you're the one writing-"

      He never finished his sentence as I clapped my hand over his mouth.

      "Quiet!" I hissed in his ear, "Our readers aren't supposed to know that I'm writing this!"

      The look on his face read, quite clearly, 'You are a total idiot'.

      "Let's go," I said, and we continued on until we found a cheerful looking inn. We just finished agreeing it'd be a perfect place to stay until a Chia flew out of the front doors, followed by a Lupe with a shattered bottle, who yelled, "And don't come back!"

      We left that inn off our list.

      Further on, a smaller but equally nice looking inn came into view, and we decided this one would probably do fine until we noticed a gang of shady characters sneak in. We seemed unsure as to whether or not it was a hideout, and then some telltale smoke seemed to burst from the roof and the shady characters sprinted out the back door and into a nearby forest.

      We hurried away before we became suspects.

      We finally came across a small and decrepit looking inn. Fortunately, it was in the centre of Meridell and furthermore, plenty of owners and pets were going in and out - it was clearly a hotspot. Reminding my pets about the ship, we went in. Sure enough, it was beyond cosy, and the sign on the wall read '50 NP per night'. The lobby was filled with different people and pets, so it was generally rather noisy, and on the far side was an information desk, with a door on either side. One door said 'Food Hall' and the other said 'Rooms'.

      "Score!" I shouted, punching the air, "We've landed ourselves a kickbottom inn."

      "But Daddy," Alkarasydes protested, "didn't the article say all-expenses-"

      "Shh, Alkarasydes!" I said, putting my finger to her mouth, "Let the nice man speak!"

      "What nice man?" she inquired incredulously, until she realized that an Eyrie was already taking down how many nights we'd be staying.

      "Is that all?" he asked as he finished.

      "Uh, yes and how much for meals?" I added.

      "Oh, those come free with each night," he said absently, as a new group came in. "Excuse me…"

      He dashed away to greet the new owner and pets, while I turned to mine.

      "Was that one awesome deal or what?" I said, grinning.

      "Or what," my pets replied wearily. I shrugged.

      "Come on, let's get our luggage to our room, the man said it's room twenty-three…"

      My words were cut short however, as our luggage suddenly floated into the air as though carried by invisible hands, and hovered over to the door marked 'Rooms'. We exchanged slightly surprised looks and followed them. The luggage seemed to be expecting something, and I figured it out myself, and opened the door. There were two sets of stairs, one going up and the other going down. The luggage floated downstairs - the stairs going up had a door at the top that read 'Upper-Class'. I expected it to be a cliché type of story, where the person expects it to be really good and it turns out only the people who pay extra get it that way, but I was wrong - the rooms downstairs were practically luxury. The luggage dropped itself outside room twenty-three, and I could swear someone accidentally bumped into me a second later and whispered 'Sorry'. Pushing this out of my mind, I opened the door. Sure enough, the room was wonderfully decorated, and was made to fit our family needs - five bedrooms, a couple of toilets, and a dining room. The room seemed to be pre-designed for us - Eralta's was practically a gym, Alkarasydes had all sorts of spy equipment, Opessenc's was loaded with artistic things and BUREUNIKONE's represented a Beauty Parlour. I could tell all of this from my pets' happy yells when they went in. I wondered what would be in mine, and smirked as different ideas popped into my head. What could be in there? A room filled with all the merchandise of-

      It was exactly like our dining room back at the Neohome. A couch, a table, four chairs, a rug, and that was it. I cried out in half shock and half anger, then laughed at my luck. I turned around and was about to leave when there was a small popping noise, and a sheet of paper appeared on the table. Curious, I walked over to it and picked it up. It was a Neomail, yet unaddressed. It merely read 'You will have a very interesting night.' I shrugged, scrunched up the letter, and ate it.

     ~ * ~

     I had a very strange night. First I dreamt that my pets and I, along with a Striped Shoyru, were walking through a completely unrecognisable land. The landscape resembled Meridell in some ways - forests, rivers, fields; it even had a castle, except this one was insanely huge. After we walked for seemingly ten minutes (at least, that's what it felt like), the dream changed to a bunch of furniture doing a group tap-dance, while a Neomail sat on a throne, watching and applauding them. A few seconds later it began talking to an invisible man, who was commandeering a suitcase as a steed. I woke with a start, sweating.

      "What a weird dream," I said to myself, struggling not to roll off the couch. "Must have been that Neomail I ate."

      It took me a few seconds to realize that my breathing was coming in short breaths - the air seemed thicker than it was when I fell asleep, and while I felt wide awake, I could tell it was still night. I frowned slightly, and strode to the middle of the room, where a jug of water lay on the table. I drank deeply, and then walked upstairs. Something felt like it was early morning, because I was so used to waking up around seven o'clock. When I went outside, however, and did a double take. Only a handful of things could have prepared me for what I saw.

      Firstly, the moon was full, although that wasn't unusual. It was probably just a full-moon time. The thing that really surprised me was that there *shouldn't* have been a moon. It was hovering in the exact middle of the night, and a handful of history lessons were enough to tell me that people who knew how to use the sun and moon as a way of telling time would know that it was midnight. Weirder still, what appeared to be the shadows of faeries were floating around the place, and there was a shockingly large amount of Mutant pets wandering around. The air was still thick and I couldn't fail to notice that it seemed as though there was a touch of evil in the air.

      "I've got to get my pets," was the only thing I said, before dashing back into the inn. I practically smashed through the door to the stairway, which I hurtled down (flew would be more accurate) and charged through the door to our room. My pets sprinted out at the sound of the huge crash.

      "Whuzzappening?" BUREUNIKONE groaned groggily.

      "Something's terribly wrong with Meridell," I said. Somehow, as though my pets had been expecting this, they were suddenly awake.

      "What?" Eralta said sharply.

      "Something's terribly wrong with Meridell," I repeated.

      "Lead the way," she ordered. I obliged straight away and took my pets outside, where midnight was certainly still stubbornly staying.

      "I hope this is some sort of bad dream… I already had a couple of weird ones," I said. "Is it a dream?"

      Eralta painfully proved that it wasn't by ramming me hard in the small of my back, and I fell face first onto the ground.

      "What in Neopia are you doing?" I yelled.

      "Proving this isn't a dream," she replied simply. I continued to rant and rave until she sighed and cuffed me over the head with her hoof. "Knock it," she said.

      "Sorry," I replied, getting up.

      We stared around us at the strange new Meridell, glancing up at the moon now and then, as though hoping it would sink and be replaced by the sun. Nothing doing.

      "We have to find a way to stop this," I said finally. My pets looked sceptically at me.

      "How?" BUREUNIKONE asked.

      "I dunno, let's look around the castle, or something; we have to stop it," I told him. "We can't just leave Meridell in a state of eternal darkness!"

      "Fine, fine, let's go," he snapped. We strode away from the inn and towards the castle. The Mutant pets that were wandering around aimlessly seemed completely oblivious to us, and we reached the drawbridge without incident. Unfortunately, it was up.

      "This complicates things," Alkarasydes said.

      "Not on my watch," I said, pulling out a rope with a hook on the end from my pocket.

      "And how, dare I ask, does that fit in there?" Opessenc asked.

      "It doesn't," I said, swinging the rope above my head and hurling it to the top of the castle. Opessenc opened his mouth to respond, thought better of it, and closed it. The hook luckily wound itself over the castle wall and fixated itself there. I gave it a hearty tug to make sure it was secure, and turned to my pets.

      "Anyone have a large, heavy, inanimate object?" I enquired. Everyone shook their heads. "Looks like I'll have to make my own," I said, shrugging, pulling out a large, heavy inanimate object from my pocket and placing it on the ground. I fastened the rope to it, pulled it again to remove any slack, and waited.

      "No way. You can't expect us to climb across on that," Eralta said, looking appalled.

      "I can and will. Now climb," I said, pushing her towards the rope. She dug her front hooves into the ground firmly, so I merely succeeded in pushing her back legs into the air.

      "Nothing doin'," she said stubbornly.

      "Oh, very well," I said, rolling my eyes. With a squeal of fright, I lifted her up, and hurled her bodily over the castle walls. We heard a distant thud and her saying "I'll get you for this!" I turned to my pets, who weren't eager to meet the same fate, and scurried across the rope with great haste. I followed them calmly, pleased with my simple intimidation.

      "You realize that you could fly across," I told BUREUNIKONE as I climbed down behind him.

      "Fear makes one do strange things," he informed me wisely. I ignored him, turning my attention to Eralta, who was lying face down on the stone. "Heal her," I ordered. He obliged, and whatever injuries (whether real or just to get out of our new quest) she had were no longer concealed, and she had no choice but to grudgingly get up.

      "And now, to find the source of this midnight," I said.

To be continued…