The Neverending Story
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THE NEVERENDING STORY
We learn that a boy named Bastian runs into a book shop to hide from some school bullies, and when he gets in the room, he meets a man named Carl Coreander. This man owns the book store, however he does not take kindly to Bastians abrupt intrusion and says that Bastian wouldnt understand any of the books in the store. When Coreander goes to get the phone Bastian notices a book on the table that says the Neverending Story on the binding and around that are 2 snakes that are holding each others tail in their mouths. We also learn about Bastian Balthazar Bux and his characteristic, like he is a short, fat boy, who does poorly in school, and has no mother. After Bastian notices the book he feels drawn to it and then Bastian grabs it and puts it in his backpack and runs to the school, where he hides in the attic and makes himself comfortable. Then he starts reading the book and thats where chapter one begins.
The chapter starts with a creature called the will-o-the-wisp in the Howling Forest, which is a part of a place called Fantastica. The wisp is on his way to deliver a message to the Childlike Empress, who is like the leader of all of Fantastica, and he is to tell her that this thing called a “Nothing” is taking over Fantastica, along the way there he meets 3 other messengers delivering the same message. These three creatures are from different parts of Fantastica, but because they are all on the same mission one of them insists that they travel together but they all want to get there before each other so they race off alone in the end of the discussion. Eventually all three get there arriving at different times, when they arrive at the Ivory Tower – which is considered the center of Fantastica because it is the home of the Childlike Empress – the four creatures find that the nothing has been spreading in areas all over Fanastica and all these messengers were already there to see the Childlike Empress. Eventually, they learn from the others that the Childlike Empress is very ill and that some people suspect that this is the cause of the nothing.
We learn eventually that the Childlike Empress is actually the center of life for all Fantastican creatures, and that she has great powers but never uses them and treats both good and bad creatures of Fantastica equally, so if she is sick then the rest of Fantastica will die. We also meet a centaur named Cairon, who bears the amulet of the Childlike Empress called the AURYN or the Gem or the Glory. This amulet gives the wearer mysterious powers and also tells people that the bearer is a badge for one acting on the Childlike Empresss orders. Cairon has been told to find a boy named Atreyu – A greenskin (another Fantastican race) who is a great hunter but fairly young – and Cairons orders are to tell Atreyu that he must go on a quest to find out how to cure the Childlike Empress, after Cairon finds Atreyu he gives him the AURYN and tells him to use it wisely because it will make people listen to him, and lead him towards wherever he must go to complete his quest. The chapter ends with Atreyu on his horse Artax galloping through the forest towards the direction the AURYN is leading him.
Atreyu journeys for many days and nights until he comes to a place called the Swamps of Sorrow and here Artax dies because the swamps made him feel like he couldnt go on any further (Atreyu has the AURYN so he is protected from the sorrow.) After that Atreyu was on his own but then he finally comes to a place that looks like a mountain but is actually the shell of a turtle named Morla the Aged One – one night while Atreyu was sleeping a purple buffalo told him to go see her to find out how to cure the childlike empress- Morla told him to travel to see Uyalala in the Southern Oracle, but also says it is impossible for him to get there because it is much to far away but nonetheless Atreyu continues on his journey. Also at the end of this chapter the story tells us that something has been following Atreyu since he started out on his journey.
For many days Atreyu travelled until he came to a cave descending into a mountain, Atreyu realizes that this cave goes through the Dead Mountains and at the bottom of the cave dwells “Ygramul the Many, the horror of horrors”, after a while he came to an enourmous spider web where a luckdragon was caught, then he sees a beast that was constantly closing down on the luckdragon and was changing into different shapes, then after a while Atreyu realized that this beast was made of several small steel-blue insects that buzzed like hornets, this was Ygramul, Atreyu then ordered it to stop and the beast saw the AURYN listened to him, when Ygramul turned into an eye to look at Atreyu, Bastian let out a cry in his attic and it was heard by the characters in the book. Then after the suspicions faded Ygramul started speaking again, when Atreyu demands Ygramul to tell him how to get to the Southern Oracle, eventually it tells him and says that when Ygramal injects its venom into its prey the prey can make one wish. So Atrey decides to let Ygramul bite him and he wishes to go visit the Southern Oracle. After this the wolf that was following Atreyu could not find him because Atreyu had wished to leave.
When Atreyu wakes from his sleep, or his teleportation he saw that he was in a different place and that the luckdragon that was in Ygramuls web had also heard what Ygramul had said to Atreyu and came to be Atreyus mount for his quest, we learn that the luckdragons name is Falkor, and after that they both fall asleep but when Atreyu wakes up he sees a small little creature that is giving him some medicine, and the creature says that Falkor is being taken care of as well and that they will both get well. When Atreyu wakes up he felt perfectly well and rested, so he went to the cave that the creatures lived in, one of them was an old man and the other a old woman, these creatures hen realize Atreyu was there and they introduce themselves as Urgl, the woman, and Engywook, the man, and they are Gnomics. Urgl was the one taking care of him and Falkor and Engywook is studying the magic gates that go to Uyalala in the Southern Oracle, after a while Engywook tells Atreyu – after he looks throughout the Gnomics telescope – that there are three gates, and that the one that Atreyu sees is guarded by two Sphinxes.
Atreyu starts to learn about the three magic gates that he must pass through – fromeEngywook – in order to see Uyalala in the Southern Oracle. The first gate, called The Great Riddle Gate is guarded by two magic Sphinxes that when they look at you through their blind eyes they send out a magic that forces you to solve every riddle in the universe so it is impossible to get through, but if the Sphinxes close their eyes (entirely