So I have had this chapter finished for quite a while, and didn't realize that I hadn't posted it until just now as I was editing a few things on older chapters. So here it is! Chapter 22! R&R please please!

Chapter 22

Michael and Cona flew south to the ruins where she had found the stand pieces for the Caller of Bantaar. Cona led Michael to the room where the stand piece used to be, figuring that the second room would be a good place to hide. She walked in and headed for the corner where the other doorway was. But Michael wasn’t following her: he was still standing outside the room.

“What’s wrong?” Cona asked.

“Something is odd with this room…”

Cona turned to Michael, “Can you walk in?”

Michael raised an eyebrow, but took a step forward. He walked over to Cona and asked, “What is this? I feel something… wanting to push me out.”

“But you can stay? It isn’t intolerable?”

“No, I can stay, but it is kinda annoying. What is going on?”

“Well, I feel almost nothing,” Cona looked to the doorway, remembering the two men who had been there when she was, “but normal people can’t even get more than one or two steps in. If you can at least stay here, it must have something to do with being winged.”

“And you were going to tell me this when?”

Cona smiled and winked at Michael, “Only if it was a problem. If you couldn’t feel anything, I wasn’t going to bother with trifles.”

Cona turned and walked into the other corner, and Michael shook his head and followed. When they reached the doorway, Michael stopped again.

“Ok, what’s with the corner?” he asked.

“You can’t see the doorway?”

“Um, the doorway? No, I just see wall.”

Cona pursed her lips, “Well, I guess I will have to lead you through it. Grab my hand and trust me.”

Michael took the proffered hand and Cona walked backwards through the doorway. Once they were through, Michael turned and looked back into the room. He could see the doorway just fine from this side. Cona continued to lead down the hall, until they reached the other room. When they got there, she realized that they were still holding hands, and let go, embarrassed. Then they found the most comfortable piece of floor they could, and sat down to figure out where the next piece was.

“So,” Michael started, “I have been thinking about the line, ‘completes the quartet.’ I’m thinking: the first piece was south, second was west, third was north, so if you have a quartet, east should be next.”

“That does make sense. But what about the ‘Lion’s Mouth?’ We figure east, but where? How far?”

“Hmmm, that’s the problem…”

They sat for a few more minutes, pondering. Cona felt like she should know where they were going, just because she seemed to be the only one who knew anything, but nothing was coming to mind. In fact, it seemed the harder she thought about their problem, the more it slipped from her mind. She was getting tired somehow, but she wasn’t going to lose to that feeling. She would continue to think about the issue no matter what. She was going to find a solution!

Michael also thought about their problem, but he was distracted by the incident with Andrew. He kept trying to focus, but his mind wandered anyways. He looked over at Cona and saw her struggling to keep her eyes open. She must be really tired, he thought, and reached over to touch her shoulder. The moment he did so, however, he suddenly felt really tired too, and the two of them collapsed.

When Cona came to herself, she was hurtling through the air over the city at an impossible speed. Alarmed, she tried to use her wings to slow down, but it didn’t work. She couldn’t even feel any wind against them. She looked down and saw the river beneath her and deduced she was going south. Suddenly Cona changed direction and sped east. In almost no time at all, she found herself at the Jag Mountain Range. She had slowed down considerably, and moved towards a certain peak. The top of it was surrounded by steep cliffs, and there was a deep gorge on the southern side, as though God had taken a huge knife and slammed it straight down on one side of the peak.

As she drew near the gaping slice in the mountain, she noticed that there was a cave on the western side, near the top of the peak. Cona found herself stopping in the air in front of the cave. As she looked at the entrance, the stalactites and stalagmites made it look like a gaping mouth with sharp teeth. She could almost hear the cave breathing as though it was alive. Suddenly she understood! The cave was the Lion’s Mouth!

As soon as Cona had her epiphany, she found herself back in the little room in the ruins. She looked down from where she was floating near the ceiling and saw herself and Michael lying on the floor. Then she saw another Michael, just above the one on the floor. He didn’t look completely solid, however, and his feet appeared to be stuck in the solid Michael’s back. Confused, she tried to call to him, but found that she couldn’t make her voice come out! Worried now, she tried to go down to what she assumed was her body, but she could get herself to get any closer to the floor! All she could do was move along the ceiling. It was as though she was a helium balloon, unable to get any lower.

Just then, the transparent Michael looked sleepily at Cona. Slowly a look of confusion crossed his face. Cona moved above him, and he strained his head to follow her. He stood up, with his feet still stuck in his body’s back, and slowly reached a hand out to her. Cona reached down as far as she could, and managed to grab a hold of his ethereal hand. Immediately she began to feel herself lower from the ceiling, and Michael lost some of his sleepy look. Cona positioned herself above her body, and landed with her ghostly feet right where her real feet were. She could feel a sort of “grounded-ness” come over her, and she let go of Michael’s hand. The sleepy look came back to his face, and Cona began to worry that he wouldn’t be able to get back into his body in that state.

Looking at the position that their bodies were in, she noticed that Michael’s real hand was on her shoulder. So she took Michael’s transparent hand again and placed it on her transparent shoulder. Then she started to kneel down into her body. Awake again, Michael followed her lead and knelt down too. Slowly the pair maneuvered into their bodies, and as soon as their ghostly heads met their real heads, they woke up, back to normal.

“What… What just happened?” Michael asked after a minute of silence.

Cona blinked at Michael. “I… don’t know. But… I know where the Lion’s Mouth is now.”

Michael turned his head slowly to look at Cona. “You do?”

She gave a weak half-smile.

Michael shook his head. “Well, I guess that’s good enough,” and he stood up, offering a hand to the Draik. “Where is it?”

“It’s a cave in the mountains to the East of the city.”

“Do you know how to get there?”

“Yes,” Cona paused, “but only the long way. We would have to travel south and then east. I don’t know if I could find it if we went straight southeast.”

Michael frowned slightly, “Well, I guess we had better be careful not to be found.”

“Do you think that it is safe from Andrew and them now?”

“I don’t think they are still around here looking for us, but I am not sure where they would search next. Probably your house. That would be convenient for us.”

“Not for me! I don’t want them snooping around my house and my neighborhood, making the neighbors more suspicious,” Cona pouted.

Michael chuckled and the two of them moved towards the doorway. As they left the ruins, Michael breathed a sigh of relief. He could tolerate the weird feeling, but being there so long had made him very tense. They started walking to find a nice, hidden takeoff point further in the forest.

“So how do you suddenly know where the Lion’s Mouth is?” Michael asked, curious.

“Well…” Cona started. “I was thinking about the problem when I fell asleep…”

Cona related the whole experience to the Angel, and to her surprise, he only seemed to vaguely remember the part that he played in the ordeal.

“I am pretty sure that I might be stuck there even now if you hadn’t helped me,” Cona said softly

Michael looked away, mostly to hide his face from the Draik as he could feel it getting warm. He wasn’t sure why he was embarrassed, especially when he couldn’t remember doing it, but it made him happy to have Cona appreciative to him.

“Well, on to the next peril!” Cona called, surprisingly cheerfully, and the pair took to the air, flying south towards the city.