Episode 78 - Any Way the Wind Blows

The pets walked back through The Valley towards the Cave Not Travelled. They trekked back from the The Road Which Ends, hearing the wind howling and whipping behind them. As they reached the end of the canyon and began to head north towards the cave, they watched as large chunks of metal playing began to fly above their heads towards Aleton Village.

Crowrigami realised that these were pieces of the Pest’s armour, and flew up to try and knock them out of the sky. Ida jumped on his back to help. They found a piece of polished steel around their size, Crowrigami flapped his wings to try and blow it down, while Ida leapt off and kicked a piece onto the ground. He then flew down to catch Ida as she plummeted to the ground. Mr. Wiggles and Virgil watched the metal plate that Ida had kicked down dragged itself through the ground for a moment before stopping, as though it were trying to re-join the rest of the pieces. When the pets reunited, they congratulated Ida for a job well done, she posed and ate a berry as a treat.

They continued to follow the river. As they neared, and avoided, Aleton Village, they saw smoke and heard the terrified screams of its inhabitants as the Prickled Pest wreaked havoc across the town. They arrived at the Cave Not Travelled, a low hill led up to its entrance, which was shrouded in shadow despite the sun still shining brightly. Wiggles and Ida thought they could hear whispers coming from inside the cave.

Wiggles backed up slightly. *“Uh, I’m hearing a lot of… strange sounds coming from this cave, maybe we should just turn back?”*

Crowrigami asked, *“What sort of sounds? I hear nothing.”*

Ida took a few steps forward. *“I want to listen more closely.”* — She listened to the whispers for a moment — *“It doesn’t make any sense.”*

*“Well do we have company inside?”*

*“There’s only one way to know.”*

Virgil said, “*You guys made me go into a mine, we’re going in here.”*

Wiggles groaned. *“I guess that’s only fair.”*

*“Yes that does seem just,”* agreed Crowrigami. *“Besides, there’s only one creature we’ve ever met in this land who’s been hostile to us and we know where that one is, hence the screaming, so balance of probability, they’re friendly.”*

As Crowrigami spoke, they again heard the piercing screams of the people of Aleton. Ida jumped on the spot for a moment to prepare herself, then walked into the Cave. The rest of the pets followed suit.

The darkness seemed to grow and envelope them, the air was cold and stale smelling. The floor underneath them was smooth, and they could just barely see the walls at the corners of their vision. As they walked further in, the whispers grew slightly louder around them, as well as the sound of dripping water coming from far ahead of them. Eventually they felt small streams of water running across the cave floor. They kept heading deeper into the cave until finally they saw a light at the end of the tunnel and the whispers around them stopped. The tunnel opened to a large room with a vaulted ceiling. It was obviously carved and not natural, in the four cardinal directions were statues of four animals carved from the rock. They were much simpler than in the sanctums, held no gems or medals, and towered above the pets reaching the roof of the cave.

There were small beams of light coming through the ceiling and illuminating the floor, upon which were carved four concentric rings surrounding a small platform that had been carved into a sort of grate. Sticking out from one of the holes in this grate was a long shard of blue gemstone, which Crowrigami walked over to examine. It looked like a forked tree branch with a smooth outer surface, but the inside refracted the light from the room, as though it were filled with hundreds of jagged edges and ridges. He looked around the rest of the room, but saw no other similar crystals. However, while looking he discovered that the rings would be rotated around the centre platform.

Crowrigami called out, *“Friends, companions! These rings are suspiciously malleable. Do you see what I mean?”*

Virgil and Mr Wiggles immediately started spinning the disks. Ida did pirouettes on another disk, while Crowrigami spun her around. After the disk Ida was on finished several rotations, it locked in place. On the surface they saw words that read,

*“So rests here the Sea and Land's attempts to turn the Wind.”*

On seeing what had happened, Mr. Wiggles spun his disk the other direction, it also clicked into place and words appeared again.

*“Long did the Beast roam, but the Land and Sea grew tired. Long will the wind howl and hate for its fell creation, which too is free from its hateful genesis.”*

They tried to figure out what the messages could mean. Virgil suggested, *“Like from what it sounds like, the wind is under the Beast’s control and we have to free the wind? Because Earth and Water are already free from it? Do you mean like our past iterations have already freed the other elements from it and now we have to free the last one.”*

Crowrigami said, *“Well, in the images the statues devoured us destroying it through the power of water, so I wonder if now the key is with wind, as you suggest.”*

*“Yeah, maybe those aren’t what we have to do, maybe that’s what the past us’s have already done.*”

*“That would explain why the Beast now appears different than it did in the past.”*

The pets all agreed, and Virgil spun the next ring. When it picked up enough speed, he jumped on top of it to ride it around. Suddenly, it stopped dead, and Virgil was sent flying off the side. He circled into a ball and rolled into the wall. The words on the surface of this disk read,

*“With fury and might it did rise from the hate of the wind, with the likeness of a beast as it longed for, it did act.”*

They all spun the last disk together.

*“For the grey wind does howl, like a beast whipped. For it too did yearn for care as the Land and Sea did so receive.”*

Virgil pointed to the message and said triumphantly, *“See I told you! We have to talk to him about the society that has put him into the villains role, and let him know it’s not the answer. We can all be friends, I knew it from the very beginning, friendship is the answer to all of this!”*

They tried to figure out how they could care for the wind, and as they did so the disks sunk into the floor, creating steps down to the also sunken centre platform. Ida walked down to the blue gemstone and tried to pull it out. There was a horrible screeching sound as it was slowly removed from the hole, leaving the grate free and open for water to flow out. She swung it around a few times, before hitting it against the wall to see what would happen. The gemstone shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. Ida pulled food out of her tails and tried to feed it to the broken shards, which upon closer inspection all resembled tiny raindrops. The drops of water coming from the ceiling came faster and faster, while the grate in the floor stopped draining as much as before. Mr Wiggles ran over and swatted the gem shards back into the water. The pets heard a low hum, and the dripping sped up even more. They started to panic, offering praise to the water while putting more of the gems into the water. The water began to spill faster and faster from the ceiling of the cave until it had completely filled the tunnel in the floor, and then it stopped. The water was perfectly clear, they could see the small gems glittering at the bottom of the pool. A low humming filled the room for a few moments, before the water took a glass-like appearance through which they saw a room and a message written in white.

*“To the heroes who came when needed, we thank you. May the sadness of the land free the people who do clearly need it.”*

From out of the water emerged four larger raindrop-shaped crystals. The room on the other side appeared to be a cupboard, with a workbench upon which were several wand-disenchanting devices. Through this water, they could see the room in Wildcliff from which they had been taken, but the could not see their parents. Mr. Wiggles gingerly put his paw into the water. It didn’t get wet, and he saw it emerge in the room on the other side. He pulled his paw back out, and the pets all took the gems floating in front of them. The water drained in an instant, and the humming was silent. The darkness that filled the tunnel leaving to the cave seemed a little lighter.

The pets walked back through the Cave Not Travelled, the sounds of screams growing louder from louder from outside.