Onyx Treasure – Turn into a Panther (Hopefully)
Welcome back for the last post in the Onyx Treasure Adventure!
If you missed the first three weeks, you can read them here, here, and here, or here’s a quick recap:
You’re a cyborg treasure hunter who just found the onyx panther statue everyone’s been looking for. (It purportedly turns you into a panther if it’s charged in sunlight.) But one of the other treasure hunters, Blanchard, found you before you could escape the crumbling temple. You tried to run away but were caught under a falling pillar. Readers voted to accept Blanchard’s help in exchange for the statue. As soon as he got you free, however, another treasure hunter, Olivia, shot him with a blow dart. She’s now threatening to do the same to you if you don’t hand over the statue.
Readers voted to use the statue to turn into a panther and hopefully escape. Let’s see how this adventure ends =)
Onyx Treasure – Turn into a Panther (Hopefully)
Olivia taps her finger against the blowgun with impatience. Stories aren’t clear about how to activate the figurine, but many of them mention embracing it, so you curl your fingers tightly around it and press it against your chest.
The tingling shoots out from your fingers through your skin.
Olivia snarls and shoots a dart.
It passes through your suddenly opaque body and pings against the rocks behind you. Its passing leaves a prick of sensation in your shoulder.
Olivia curses, shooting more darts. Each one pricks as it passes through but the sensation is lost in the tingling that’s intensified into a blaze along your nerves.
And then it’s done. At least, you think the transformation is done. The opaqueness never leaves your body and when Olivia shoots another dart, it passes through as well.
She can’t hurt you. But more importantly you become aware of the crumbling temple. Parts of the roof have caved in, pillars lay across the floor, shattered into bits of stone, and your resting place, the alter where the grooves fit your paws perfectly, has vanished through a sunken floor.
Your temple is dying. Rage blossoms like a fire in your chest. A deep growl rumbles forth and the woman across the way takes a slow step backwards.
You follow and your paw clicks on the stone. Clicks? You look to see that half your body is metal, but your momentary shock vanishes when the woman spins and runs.
A thrill brings another growl from your throat and you give chase.
Down tunnels and around fallen stones, sliding below closing doors and vaulting over tables. The woman’s fast and crafty. She finally gains enough of a lead to close a door in your face. By the time you realize you can walk through the door, she’s gone.
Still, you track her smell until you leave the temple. Ten feet into the trees and you hit an invisible wall. She’s out there somewhere. Pacing the unseen barrier, you circle the temple and finally give up and stretch in the glorious sunlight. The warmth sends a delightful tingle through your limbs.
You return to the temple, determined to guard your home even if it is in shambles. There’s the scent of others inside—
After a while, those scents start to fade, but the drive to protect remains strong. Somewhere in the mix of enjoying the glorious sunlight outside and wandering the temple’s halls, you know there’s more that you should be doing, something more beyond this existence, but what that more is, you don’t know. It’s not pressing enough to wake you from another sunlit nap.
The End
Well, becoming a panther worked…maybe too well =)
Thank you for joining this month’s adventure! I had forgotten how fun it is to write these posts.
The next couple of weeks are going to involve moving, so there may not be any posts for a bit, but I promise there will be a new adventure soon!
Until then, blessings,
Jennifer
P.S. In a quick Theos Rising update, we’re about 52% through the first professional edit. I’ll be contacting the cover designer to start on the cover soon and we’re still tentatively on for a spring publication!
