Chronicles of the Wolf Book II: A Wolf in Sheep's clothing

Chapter 1

Saffar, a planet that resided in the constellation of Andromeda. Just my luck, I thought. Who knows how much time had jumped between being on moon called Rho and now on this planet called Saffar. It could be I was instantly transported across the cosmos, but I already had been disabused of that idea. I mean I didn’t even know where the hell Andromeda was.

I was not sure what I was more annoyed by, if I was more annoyed by the fact that I was transported halfway across the cosmos for a second time or if I was more annoyed by the fact that another 30 or 40 years could have passed since the time that Walker and I were in that temple. That whole thing seemed to have taken a matter of moments. Even though the journey itself probably took us a better part of a month to complete, perhaps more.

There was one thing that was going on in my head. I didn’t understand how this place could be Saffar, this place was dark, there was nothing but darkness all around. Complete and utter darkness. There were occasional flashes from lightning off in the distance that would light it up but that was it.

But what was this dark world of Saffar? I wondered. More importantly what was this creature that had come to find us? This creature that appeared shortly after we had appeared in Saffar, it was something unlike anything I had ever seen. Walker however he seemed to know all to well about this creature and about this dark world.

“What can you tell me about this place pup?” I asked.

“I…I’ve only heard of this part of Saffar,” Walker stuttered.

“Are you sure we are on your home world?” I asked.

“Yes,” Walker asked. “There is no doubt about it.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“That,” Walker said pointing at the creature that was ahead of us, and it was leading us some unknown place.

The only way I could describe this thing was…a bug-bat-thing. It was hard to explain. Like an insect it had a hard-looking exoskeleton. It had huge bulbous eyes, that glowed red in the darkness. From what I could tell it had man-like hands, but they were massive, bigger than my hands. This thing also made me look small meaning it had to have been at least 12 feet tall.

The thing had these massive bat-like wings on its back. They had to have stretched out easily 15 feet when he had full extended them to land earlier when we first saw this thing. I couldn’t tell if it was black or dark grey of if it was because of the darkness of this dark world of Saffar that made it look that way.

“Do you know what it is?” I asked.

“I’ve only heard legends of it,” Walker said. “But the way they described this thing and the fact that it came from here, makes me know that we are on Saffar.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“They call it Motylek Chelovek,” Walker said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Closest I could say, like a man who is a moth?” Walker said after thinking about that for a bit.

“A moth?” I looked back at the creature.

I guess I could see that. It kind of did look like a combination of a man and a giant moth, except for the leathery wings the thing had, I could see why it was called a man who was a moth.

“I guess I could see that,” I said looking at Walker and noticed that he looked increasingly white and I wanted to know why he was so afraid. “What do you think he wants to do with us?”

“The legends I have heard of these things…” Walker started. “They are either omens predicting future catastrophes, or they were creatures that could eat my kind.”

“Either way this thing is bad news,” I said looking back at the creature.

I was studying this thing. I was wondering if I could take it on. I honestly couldn’t see how. It was much bigger than I was, at least four feet taller than I. Not only that but it looked much stronger than I was. Its massive arms looked like it could lift a mountain with no strain. I could do no such thing. The biggest thing I could lift was something that weighed about 30 tons, I could probably carry something much bigger, but I was not sure. This thing looked like it could carry me at the same time I was carrying the heaviest thing I was carrying three times over.

“But it didn’t attack us right?” I said pointing this out.

“Yeah, I know, and that is what is bothering me.” Walker said.

“There is something that is bother me as well and that is that I don’t get this place, pup, how can this be your home world?” I asked.

“My kind call this the Tehb,” Walker said. “It is the dark side of my planet.”

“I can see that,” snorting at the obviousness of that statement.

“You don’t understand,” Walker said. “This part of Saffar, it is always in the dark. You see the planet is tide locked.”

“Tide what?” I asked.

“It means only one side of the planet faces the star at all times.” Walker said. “Saffar is like that, but that means one side of the planet is always facing the darkness of space.”

“And I suppose that we are on that side of the planet,” I said.

“Yes,” Walker said. “But I don’t understand how we are alive right now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Because this side of the planet is supposed to be frigid way too cold to support any life.” Walker said.

“And yet here we are,” I said.

It was slightly nippy I had to admit, but it was warmer than the most frigid winter months of Kyzlbrahma. Walker had a point though if this part of the planet was always in darkness how could we be simply walking around without a problem?

“But you said your kind knew about this thing?” I asked pointing at the creature that was still ahead of us.

“We have had legends of it, yes.” Walker said.

“How?” I asked.

“From what I remember, legend spoke that this thing came from the shadows and either warned people of some impending disaster, or to kill someone.” Walker said, repeating pretty much what he had said earlier.

I knew that this meant that this was pretty much the extent of what he knew. I again sized this creature. I was starting to remember what my father had said. About those bug creatures that he had seen back on Kyzlbrahma. Could this be what he had seen. It seemed eerily like what my father had described to me. Then I remember I had asked Walker about that creature and he had called it a Zhiran.

I began to realize that now, that idea of a massive insect creature thing probably was something that wasn’t as far fetched as some of the stuff I have seen so far.

I started to wonder where this thing was leading us to. I also noticed that the other things around us, seem to respect this moth-man thing. They all stayed away and simply watched us go through the dark world. They were simple fantastic creatures. Some creatures had glowing eyes like the one in front of us, others had glowing pigments all over their bodies, yet others had glowing appendages.

There were some creatures that simply wisped in the air as if they were swimming. It was a curios sight, they were almost like the Medusas back home. Medusas were these balloon-like creatures that lived underwater, they had long tendrils that stung if you wound hit them with any part of your skin. There were some similar creatures floating around in the air around us.

There were other creatures that were hard to describe but I will do my best. They were in the shape of a pear, but they had small little fins at the top of the “pear”. It had these big glowing green eyes and glowed mostly purple with the fins flapping around in a multi-colored array.

“This reminds me of stuff one would see underwater.” I said.

Despite it being pretty much pitch-black darkness all around us, this world seemed to have a beauty to it. Especially all the diverse creatures all around us. I looked back at the moth creature in front of us. I still studied to see if I could take it and run, but like earlier evaluations I knew that there was no way I could do it.

“Do you know how we got here?” I asked.

I suddenly realized that I had not asked this yet.

“I think that pedestal was rigged to automatically transport anyone around it.” Walker explained. “I had seen something similar to it but this thing we encountered is years ahead of our technology.”

We suddenly stopped, and we were in front of these colossal gates. I could barely see them in the darkness. They were solid black. Somehow, they were even blacker than the space around us. They were huge, very huge. They had to be at least three times bigger than the clock towers we had seen.

I looked up and could not see where these things ended and where the sky began. It seemed like these gates went out into forever. I looked over at Walker who looked just as shocked as I did.

“What the hell is behind this?” I asked

“I don’t know,” Walker asked.

The weird moth thing walked up to the gates and placed his massive hand on some side of the gate. The gate rumbled, and he stepped back as the gates began to swing inwards. They opened as if they were being opened by large chains. I heard the chains pull these massive doors, they made the ground rumble, but it was not violent, I wondered if there were some sort of bushings or something under the doors that made the rumble a lot less fierce.

The creature motioned us to continue walking after the doors fully open. When we walked in it was as if we were somewhere totally different. But I knew we were not. It was a city unlike any other city that I had ever seen, the only one that came close was the ancient city of Rhodesia.