Sorry for the update taking soooooooo long... getting in the groove of school and sports and band and homework and siblings and lions and tigers and bears, Oh My! Thanks for all y'all who reviewed. It really gets me going to write the next chapter. Plus, I have no idea if I'm a terrible writer, although my negative suspicions have been confirmed by one or two outside factors... If my chapters aren't good, do tell. Sooooooooooooo...
Sit back.
relax.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Repeat.
And Enjoy the Chapter!
"Quit that!" I say, smacking a thieving Rekkr on the face.
"Ow! What was that for?" He says, placing a bony hand on his reddening right cheek. Even though we've been traveling for a month, his skin still stays that pale-ish shade, seemingly immune to whatever the sun threw at him. I, on the other hand, turned a nice shade of brown, not unlike the native tribes we see wandering around.
"No one. Steals. My. Apples!" I say, staring him right in the eye, unconsciously placing my hands on my hips, mimicking a gesture my mother used countless times when my siblings and I were little.
"I do!" He yells loudly and snatches my shiny green apple from my hands and sprinting off into the area of Spine forest we currently stopped to rest in. I sprint after him, legs pumping beneath me, angling my thin body different ways to avoid smacking into a tree. Every once and a while, something flashes silver. Follow the shining elf, I guess.
When I finally do catch up to him, He's lounging on a log, tossing the core of my sweet, perfect apple to the side. Even though I run faster than almost any human, it doesn't compare to elfin standards. In four more months, I'll beat him. One more year until human ears get a point, eyes are opened, and ears are able to welcome the natural music of the forest, until grace is grafted into every step, until more elfin qualities can change me through my bond with Silfr, the most beautiful, annoying, arguementive dragon to ever live.
"Why you..." I start off, red in the face, wispy stray locks of brown and gold falling out of my usually tied back hair. Unable to come up with a good insult, I plop down to the ground next to a tree and cross my arms, frustrated and glaring at the elf in front of me.
"Delicious." he says and licks his lips. We've gotten to know each other better in the month we've traveled together. The transition from strangers to friends was so seamless, we could've been childhood playmates. At one point, his hair grew too long in my opinion. The ends were touching his ears and it drove me bonkers to no end. So, just a few nights ago, while he was in that weird half-asleep stage the elves call 'sleep', I cut his hair. It's far more uniform now, but the almost spiky look never went away. If anything it got worse when the blade took off the first little bits of spider-silk silver locks. It was incredibly soft... like a kitten.
Still playfully angry about my apple, I notice he seems a little distracted, looking either at me, or something behind me. Taking the provided advantage, launch from my position on the dirt and at Rekkr, deciding that in the very least he deserves a bruise for eating the plump, juicy fruit.
I was off the ground so fast, he was caught completely unprepared when I slam right into him. We roll to the other side of the log, tumbling to the grass and causing a very angry gray mouse to scamper back to the surrounding woods. I land on top of him, but victory is short-lived. He executes a backwards somersault, curling my smaller frame into his own and releasing me, pinning my arms down to either side of my head and sitting on my stomach, cross-legged since he knows for a fact that I haven't built up enough muscle to move him.
He always turns out the victor. That doesn't mean it isn't fun to try.
"Yay! Rekkr won!" He says in a high-pitched voice, taking my limp hands and forcing them to clap, he the puppeteer and I the marionette. "Rekkr is the strongest, fastest, and most handsome person I have ever met." He continues in his terrible impersonation of me. I just roll my eyes. He moves my arms throughout his narcissistic, high pitched, terribly enacted impersonation of me.
"Oh get off of me you narcissistic mirror." I say. When he choses to ignore me and continue to sit on my stomach, I lift my right leg up and whack my boot against the back of his head.
"Ow!" he mutters a quick healing spell. "Ok, I get your point." He says, still looking a little smug because the 'mighty elvish Rekkr' beat a human girl. We lift ourselves off the earth, covered in grass cuts and mildly itchy everywhere.
"We should really scry Groa and Okatr." I say.
"We can't scry Groa and Okatr because of the wards they have placed around them. Why don't we just ask Silfr and Arget to come and fly us back?" He answers. He's got a point. Arget and Silfr had grown to more than twice their sizes, the original height difference continuously present. Arget had hatched for Rekkr a week before the eggs had finally circulated to my home, and thus he was the bigger dragon. Silfr's speed and maneuverability made up for her size and almost always outdistanced Arget. "Plus, we don't have any water to scry with."
"I've been thinking..." I said.
"Dangerous pastime." He says, interrupting.
"Have you influenced your hair with magic?" I asked him.
"What?"
"Have you cast any permanent spells to enhance the appearance of your hair?" I ask again.
"Yes." He looks a little confused.
"Bend over so that I can look into your hair." I instruct him.
He complies and bends the slightest bit foreword. I mutter a quick spell and a slightly distorted picture of Groa and Okatr appears in the silver surface of Rekkr's hair.
Groa looks up from his meditation. He looks to the left and to the right, not finding the culprit.
I Don't know what you two are doing but I demand that you must stop this instance! Groa screams into both of our heads. I grab my ears and fall down from the mental wave. Rekkr just stands there grinning, his hair back to its usual state.
"How did you know that my hair would allow you to scry him?" He looks a little bewildered.
"Your hair? It's magic." I say simply. "You cast a spell on it and it left little remnants. Not to mention at only 75 years old, you're still soaked to the very bone in magic." I continue. From how he talks sometimes, and the events he speaks of, I acted the part of a detective to figure out his age... the fact that I asked him how old he was, and how he simply answered 75, is completely irrelevant.
"What was what?" I ask. It sounded similar to a shout. For what? I don't know.
"I don't hear anything." Rekkr says, which is odd because of his superior hearing.
Then I hear it again, closer.
The inhuman screeching. It sounded like nothing I've ever heard before. It sounded like the pain of a mother who just lost a beloved child, the tortured cry of a man beaten by a thousand metal whips, the demented howl of a child forgotten in a place deep underground, the sound of every bad memory that comes to mind. That single screech tears into my very bones, coursing through my blood with words that do not exist, with ideas that shouldn't form. That single noise was pain in every form.
I fall to the ground, numb everywhere from the inside out. My brain won't form complete thoughts. My flesh feels like it's itching to melt away, like a thousand tiny insects crawl through my veins. Then I hear things. There's a...
...WHO...
...Watch out...
...Power...
...feed, feel the...
...ta-...
Another scream.
...Wait!...
Have mercy!...
The terrified voices roll through my head like black oil.
The voices are all arguing and singing, chanting in their demented ways. Pain. There was so much pain. I'm living thousands of ways to die. I shift into a hallucination.
There is a field. Blood everywhere. The sky is a mirror to the blood soaking the hungry earth, clouds taking the form of the faceless bodies. It smells of burnt flesh. It smells of blood. There is silence. A terrible, dead silence broken only by a slow moan of a man near death with no hope of awaking to tomorrow. Trying to pick him out of the bloodbath would be impossible.
I Stand, cowering behind a mound of bodies. I wonder if I built this. I'm soaked through with blood. Is it my blood? Is it the blood of my enemy? Is it the blood of a friend? A comrade? The blood is sticky. Some of it dried. Some of it fresh. It coats my flesh in thick layers. I can't move. Something is running at me, something behind me, but I can't move. I can't turn. It's coming! My heart beats faster. It comes to this after months of fighting. Victory traded for...
My vision shifts.
"No! Please! I'm innocent!" I scream. The two men holding me just chuckle victoriously. They throw me into a rough cell. I don't know what I did to deserve this. I don't know what's going to happen next, I just know it's bad. It's very bad. I don't know why I'm so afraid.
A man wheels a cart into the cell. The cart is dripping with malicious devices. What are they going to do to me? I back into a corner and close my eyes. The man wheeling the cart pulls out a knife. They're going to skin me alive.
The first stab of pain makes me scream. I know they're not going to stop. They'll keep me alive so they can torture me. They're going to skin me alive...
My vision shifts again.
And again.
And again.
I feel the ripping agony of a dragon's heart when he has lost his rider.
I feel the terror and pain of an unwilling Helgrind sacrifice, slowly chopped to pieces.
It won't stop shifting. The pain! I relive a thousand deaths. A million battles. A billion tortures. I feel the anguish, hatred, and terror of a mother forced to watch her husband murder her only child.
The visions continue as everything real fades.
OK, yeah, I know, really short.
I just really couldn't wait to post at least something. It's been several months, and quite frankly I ran headlong into a brick wall. I am not proud of this chapter (not only is it way too short, I also am not pleased with how it turned out) but I hope it is better than nothing. Thanks for putting up with me!
I, the worst procrastinator, solemnly swear that I will make the next update better. Or, maybe just go back and rewrite half of it. Hope it wasn't too bad!