Moonstruck

𝓯𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓽𝓮𝓮𝓷 | House of Dreams and Moonlight

Ellie had never been religious—not like her mother, who had been raised a pious follower of the Apostles—but standing here in this abandoned temple, staring at the ruins around her, she almost wanted to pray. After weeks of painstaking strategizing, the Sanguine Pack had settled upon their plan of action: half of them, led by Beta Caleb, would charge towards Cerul as a bluff and distraction; the other half, led by Kiera, would take Lazuli by storm. They had seized this Lunist temple, formerly a temple dedicated to the Apostles of the Moon, and it would serve as their campsite for the day before they set out for the House of Bleu Celeste that very night.

Evidently, the Lunists had never truly made the temple theirs. Later, Ellie would find that, despite all their efforts to tame it, the place of worship had refused all Lunist influence and run wild in its righteous, divine defiance—not white magic, but something far more ancient and infinite.

The temple, as per custom for all Aurelian architecture, had been built as a greenhouse in the shape of a geodesic dome. Over the years, it had become a creature of its own, a grotesque tangle of weeds shot through with tendrils of wild, uncaring yet not unkind beauty. Years of abandon had turned what had once been a meticulously kept garden into a glass cavern of thorns and thistles, prickly wilderness pocked with rotted garden-bench pews and cracked stone fountain altars. The air had the dry, dusty aroma of a long-emptied perfume bottle, sultry and soporific. Even the late afternoon sunlight that shone through the grimy glass dome was weak and wavering. The sky outside was broad and clear, but inside the temple it was a living tomb, a wild cage.

What a hub of bustling life this place must have once been—and now it was full of a different, more deadly kind of life.

Along the circumference of the dome, just inside the curved glass walls at equal intervals, stood eight colossal statues proud and erect: the Eight Apostles of the Moon—the original disciples of the goddess Aurelia, the first werewolves. Ellie peered up at the statue towering before her: a broad-shouldered man with a piercing stare and a stern countenance. She was vaguely aware of Kiera standing beside her, following her gaze.

"That's Kieran, Apostle of the Full Moon," Kiera said. "I was named after him."

Ellie raised her eyebrows. Her childhood had been replete with her mother's tales and teachings of the Apostles and their ways—as was the case of most human children she had met. It came as a pleasant surprise that some werewolves in the Sanguine Pack would know about them. "I forgot you were raised as a human."

Kiera's hand flitted towards her back—a nervous tic, Ellie noticed, she'd picked up ever since their trip to Amaranthine, Kiera's old home. "I forgot, too. But I remember everything now."

Almost as if they were one, they turned and strolled along the circular border. The rest of the Sanguine Pack was scattered throughout the temple in small clusters, rehashing the battle plan or sparring to pass the time until sundown.

"Maria," Ellie said, pointing to the haughty-looking woman standing opposite Kieran. Apostle Maria of the New Moon; the namesake of her mother, Marie Bellamy. "And Elaine." Apostle Elaine of the First Quarter. "That must be why Seth always calls me Elaine, right?"

"I'm pretty sure," said Kiera, "he just calls you Elaine to mess with you. He can be a little shit sometimes. But it's a pretty name, nonetheless."

Thank goddess Kiera was willing to simply talk to Ellie—they both knew Ellie had only the vaguest grasp on military jargon and was even more hopeless at fighting. It wasn't a matter of modesty or even insecurity; the truth was that Ellie had nothing to contribute to the war effort. She simply couldn't.

And how could she? She'd only joined the Sanguine Pack and began training a mere couple of weeks ago. If this were a fairy tale or a badly written fantasy novel, she would catch up to the rest of the pack members—each of whom had at least several years under their belts—in a matter of a few days, a handful of cinematic training montages. But this was real life, with realistic outcomes.