Raccciman’s World

My heart was doing six thumps for one, and my breath was still rasping, but I figured I was doing good, cause I'd got over the ridge of a roof, and had slithered mostly down the other side where Werin couldn't see me nor the police neither. Then an arm reached out from the darkness under the the overhang of the next roof up, and I was hauled into the shadows.

My breath stopped up and my chest squeezed tight, and I thought I'd choke. “How did Werin Weaselface light up the moon?” whispered the person who'd hauled me over, and I started breathing again. I didn't answer though because I was too busy gulping like a fish.

“The moon is a round piece of rock, that travels around the world on the same path and precisely opposite to the sun,” his whisper continued.

I figure that's the stuff I miss by not being in the orphanage school, and it didn't seem too useful to be nattering about on the rooftop at night. “Amulet,” I told him between chest rattling gasps.

“When sunlight reaches the moon, on a clear dawn or sunset, it shows as a glowing red arch.”

“Never seen that,” I muttered, ignoring the stretching pains between my heaving ribs. “Werin's magic amulet made those lights that went up to the moon.” I was trying to be helpful, because it was always good to be helpful to people who had the nape of your tunic bunched up in their fist.

“I didn't see any lights.”

“They were magic lights.” And this fellow couldn't see magic either. And he knew Werin. And he had no business being up on a roof of the university at night. I was still trying to figure that out when a glowing woman swooped down from the sky.

She had long golden hair, skin the color of cream, rose colored lips and she was so beautiful that when you looked at her you couldn't breathe, (not that I could breathe anyway.) But all around her dark magic writhed and swarmed like a cloak of angry snakes. She floated lower until she stood in the air just above Werin, and looked down at where I guessed he must be.

“Why have you called for me?” she asked in a voice sweeter than honey, or birdsong, or the most beautiful music in the world.

“I... I need help,” Werin voice stammered. “I was told to use the medallion as a last resort. That it could summon a god.”

“I think that answers that question,” whispered the man's voice in my ear.

“I am the Lady Vamesse,” the vision said. “Goddess of light and truth.”

“And here's where we slip away quietly while everyone's watching her.” His fist tightened on my tunic, but I couldn't stop looking at them black magic snakes and my stomach clenched, and the blood pounded in my head.