Alright! Busy week at school but somehow I managed to get this chapter done. Onward!
Chapter 5
Blackness surged, swallowed, and eventually stilled. Astrid could see nothing and felt only cold emptiness. She couldn't concentrate; anxiety was rampant. She couldn't stop the panic. Movement was slow. Despite the emptiness the air was heavy.
Through the silence she heard a distant murmur. Where had it come from? She wanted to go toward it but she couldn't move. She tried to speak but words couldn't come from her throat.
Astrid?
She knew she had heard her name. It had been muffled but clearer than before. She urged the voice to speak again. She'd find it.
Astrid? Astrid!
It was closer. Was she moving toward it or was it moving toward her? She couldn't tell.
"Astrid!" Hiccup was calling her.
Finally she could feel. She was able to pull herself back into her body. She landed back in it like a bag of rocks. She felt the heaviness of bones and flesh all at once. Her chest heaved and she gasped for the cavern's chilly air.
"Astrid?" Hiccup was kneeling over her, cradling her head and shoulders in his arms. "What happened? Are you alright?"
"I don't know." Astrid gasped. Her voice was raspy and her throat was dry. She put a hand to her neck and Hiccup put a canteen to her lips. She graciously accepted the water and drank nearly half of it.
"You went back inside and I was getting ready to head back to the village when Toothless and Stormfly sort of…panicked. It was like there was something they didn't like in here. They wouldn't come in but I couldn't fly away and leave you in here alone." Hiccup explained. While he talked he griped her shoulder and hugged her right. "I-I don't know what happened but you were on the floor and I couldn't wake you up. You started…having some sort of a fit. I didn't know what do to. I-I panicked."
"It's alright." Astrid said. She was weak and when she tried to stand her legs shook. Hiccup reached out for her arms to steady her. Normally, she would have let go of him when she was to her feet but she was too unstable. She felt as though her legs would give out at any moment. She kept a weak grip on Hiccup's arm. "I need to go back."
"What? No!" Hiccup shook his head. He tightened his grip on Astrid.
"Hiccup, something happened to the spirits and I need to know what. I know the answer is there. I just have to look for it." Astrid said. She griped the front of shirt.
Hiccup opened his mouth to argue but closed it. He sighed, shook his head, and said "Fine. But I'm not leaving until you come back."
"Okay." Astrid said. That was fine. She felt comfortable with Hiccup being there. Although he didn't look at all comfortable with the idea.
"Be careful." Hiccup said as Astrid sat back down on the cavern floor.
Astrid couldn't confirm that. She was nervous about what she was about to dive into. She inhaled, and exhaled slowly to relax into the spirit world. The spirit veil was much too easy to penetrate. The separating wall between the in-between world and the living world was weaker, transparent, and turbulent. Astrid was pulled into the thundering darkness and thrown to the grown.
The spirit world had molded into a conglomeration of memories that expanded and faded into the distant shadows. Astrid began wandering through the mismatched streets, looking for anything. Spirits were far and few and most were unresponsive.
Astrid jumped when doors were thrown open. It had come from the second floor of a stone and wood house where a woman clung to a balcony's rail.
"Hey!" Astrid called to her.
The woman's spirit stood up on wobbly legs. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
"Can you hear me?" Astrid called.
The woman wailed and threw herself from the balcony. Astrid heard the horrible thump of a body's weight slamming onto the hard ground. A small building separated her from the scene and she paused before running around to where the woman had fallen. Astrid was prepared to see a mangled woman but when she came around the building the ground beneath the balcony was bare.
"Hello?" Astrid looked up to the balcony. She took several steps back to see onto it.
Suddenly the woman burst through the doors and fell onto the balcony, clinging once again to the rails. She stood and sobbed into her hands and Astrid could only watch as the woman threw herself from the balcony. She landed on the solid ground with a bone crunching thud. Astrid couldn't stop the shout that came from her throat. But the body didn't linger on the ground. No sooner had it smashed into the ground than it faded into it. And the cycle began again.
"What?" Astrid stepped away from the scene. She didn't want to witness the scene again. She turned and took several quick stepped but it wasn't far enough to not hear the thud. Astrid cringed at the sound but kept going. She wanted as much space between her and the falling woman as possible.
It was the same with every spirit she encountered. They acted as though she weren't there. She could only watch as they rounded the cycle of their death, again and again.
An old man clutched at his chest, fell gasping to the floor, where he lay twitching, where he eventually stilled and faded into the ground. He repeated, again and again.
Astrid had the sinking feeling that this is all she would find. She came to the winding's street end at an old stone well. Behind it a wall stretched into the breathing shadows. She was about to turn down another path when she heard the sound of a contained cry. She looked to the well. Her stomach wrenched.
It had been a cry she'd heard. A baby's cry.
She inched toward the well. She didn't want to look in but she couldn't help it. She wanted to help it, pull it out and cradle it, anything to make it stop crying. It was such a terrible and sad sound.
The gravel surrounding the well crunched under her feet. She crept to the side and cursed herself as she bent to look inside. But she had no sooner looked past the well's edge than a dark head blocked her view. A face followed, curtained by thick black hair, dotted with great black bloodshot eyes, widened to a frightening size.
Astrid threw herself backward and stumbled. She fell to the ground as the black hair and eyes pulled the rest of itself out of the well with white scrawny arms. It was a skinny woman that followed, hair a flattened mess and clothes in tatters. She opened her mouth to let out a scream of a wail.
The scream shocked the dark streets and Astrid didn't want to stay any longer. She clawed her way away from the woman and when there was enough room between them she flipped herself over and clamored to her feet.
"My baby…" she heard the woman cry.
Astrid ran from the woman, from the well, from the echoing screams of the infant. The woman's voice faded but the child's screams were slow to die. She ran until she couldn't any longer. She just wanted the sound to go away. At last she collapsed and it was there she stayed until she caught her breath and calmed her anxiety.
But the solace didn't last long. She could still hear sobbing but it did not belong to the woman or the child. Astrid searched the shadows for the source. They were growing thicker and darker. Astrid looked behind her but the village of memories was gone. She was in some kind of a courtyard surrounded by trees she'd never seen before and a massive stone structure.
She came upon the source of the sobbing. It was a young girl crouched against a stone wall. Her knees were pulled up to her chest and she trucked her head into her arms. She was wearing robes Astrid had never seen before. This girl wasn't like the rest of the spirits. She had a solidarity that spirits and their memories didn't have. She looked almost…real, like a living person.
"Hello?" Astrid asked. It was worth a shot. But Astrid didn't anticipate the girl's head to tilt upward and green eyes to stare into hers. "Can you hear me?"
The girl nodded. She was clearly as intimidated by all this as Astrid was.
"Can you tell me what happened? Why is all this like this?" Astrid asked. She was so relieved to find someone that could speak to her that she had forgone formalities and cautions.
The girl didn't respond. She kept staring at Astrid with those piercing green eyes. Astrid inched her way toward the girl. She kept her hands out and open as a peace offering. She came within arms distance of the girl and paused.
"Can you talk?" Astrid asked. The girl seemed to nod but Astrid wasn't sure. Her eyes were looking at her but there was no identifying what she was thinking. Astrid reached out to her with an open palm.
The girl screamed and shoved Astrid's hand away. At the moment her hand came into contact with Astrid's it was as though she had been submerged in frozen waters. Astrid was thrown into a rushing mash of memories, roaring past in flashes and quick sounds. There was an island, houses and huts, a temple with dark corridors and flickering torches, and five identical robed girls in a dark cavern. At the back was a horrible hole in the hard stone floor. Darkness was swirling inside of is as thick as blood.
Flashes came of a dance at the foot of the pit, a man stood in the center, from the pit a bubbling pushed the bloody darkness upward in thundering clamor. From the pit the darkness burst, airborne, blindingly fast, and overwhelmed the dancers. The man in the center screamed and grabbed a girl and with inhuman force threw her into the pit. She was swallowed by a thousand hungry hands that pulled her downward into the pit. The girls scatter as the darkness bound toward them. The huddled in a clump.
Astrid fell to the ground. She sat up but the girl in the robes was gone. She sat for a moment to digest what she had seen. The girl that had just been here had been the girl thrown into the pit. But what did that mean? What did any of it mean? Whatever those dance rings had done had woken something inside the pit and like a beast it burst with darkness.
Astrid knew that whatever they had done had something to do with the spirit world's chaos. But was there a way to reverse it?
Astrid walked around the temple and found the massive doors. She pushed against them but they were shut tight.
"You don't belong here."
Astrid spun around. Standing not far from her was a robed man on jerky legs. His arms dangled carelessly from his shoulders. There was a energy emanating from him that the others had lacked. It was threatening, malicious, menacing. The darkness swirled at his back like arms.
"You shall not trespass here."
His movements were not his own; he walked as a stiff puppet on strings. Astrid looked for the quickest escape route but on either side walls rose. She was trapped. She pressed her back against the doors but still there were held fast.
The robed man moved with astonishing speed. In a blink he was only a few inches away from her. She could see the white that had swallowed his eyes. He pushed her through he doors and she crashed onto the temple's floor. His angry howls were echoing off the cold walls. Astrid struggle to get to her feet but dark hands surged from the floor and grasped her. She fought them and could feel ice where they had touched her.
Astrid didn't give him or the hands a chance to make another move. She ran. The halls twisted and didn't seem to end. She could hear him behind her moving through the walls like the shadows at his back. How could she outrun a phantom? She hadn't feared spirits for so long and she had not desire to return.
When Hiccup had successfully brought her back to life the spirits had tried to pull her back to the underworld. But she had managed to communicate with them and make something of a mutual agreement. But it seemed now that it was off.
She took a look behind her and crashed into a wall. The lower half creaked with her weight. With the robed man chasing her she had to think fast. The pushed on the lower half of the wall and it opened. She crawled through the opening and found herself in an altar room.
It was lit with a strange light although the hundreds of candles that lined the walls were cold. On the floor in front of the altar was a dark clump in the center of a dangerously red stain. A hand was exposed and clinging to the edge of the altar. Astrid was frozen at the scene. She didn't know why but she knew this had something to do with it as well. Death had an unnerving way of ushering in disaster.
"You don't belong here.'
The robed man's voice was ice and left her with gooseflesh.
"Here."
Astrid was surprised to hear a second voice. It was not the robed man who'd chased her here. It came from an elderly man standing beside the altar. He hadn't been there a moment before. When Astrid looked at him he gestured toward the wall.
"What?" Astrid asked. The elderly man wasn't consumed with dark energy.
The elderly man slide the wall to the side and revealed a narrow passage. Astrid hesitated but when she heard the robed man in the hall she darted through. As she passed him Astrid could feel the energy coming from the elderly man. It wasn't the same as most spirits. It was…she wasn't sure how to describe it. It was like welcoming and friendly. It was…warm.
The passage was narrow and dark. Astrid ran a hand along the rough rocky wall to guide her. She couldn't move very fast and she was taken by surprise when the door from the altar room was closed and left her in complete darkness. There was a horrible sound like the slicing of flesh and the sticky splashing of blood. There was a yelp from an old throat and a thud on the floor.
Astrid shook her trepidation off and kept going down the dark passage. It seemed to go on forever. All her could hear were her feet upon the ground and her haggard breathing. Suddenly, she slammed into something solid. It was blocking the passage but wasn't stone. It must be the exit. She pushed against it but it didn't budge. She tried sliding it as the elderly man had done and to her relief it began to move.
Pale light was seeping through and she managed to get it open enough to squeeze herself through. She was back outside the temple in some kind of courtyard. There were multiple flower beds but they were all dry and dead. The nightmarish fog was thick and it swirled and bubbled and crawled over the courtyard walls.
"You don't belong here."
Astrid felt a heavy drop in her chest. The passageway hadn't helped her escape the phantom robed man. He appeared in the fog, as part of it, and all at once rushed forward to swallow the flower garden and her. There was nothing to hold onto and she was pulled downward by a hundred frozen shadow hands. It engulfed her and was suffocating, like water drowning her very spirit. She fought against the cold and dark.
It was like before, when she thought she wouldn't be able to escape she could hear the distance voice calling her back home. At last she could fee her body and she clawed from the darkness back to it. The heaviness was worse than before and it left like she was underneath a great rock.
"Not again." Hiccup said immediately. He was not holding her but he was kneeling over her with that worried look on his face.
"Hmm?" Astrid
"You can't go back." Hiccup said with a sternness that he didn't show very often.
"Hiccup, I think I know what happened." Astrid said as she tried to sit up. Her body was weak, like bread dough, and it felt as useless. She collapsed but Hiccup caught her. He pulled her into a sitting position.
"It doesn't matter, Astrid." Hiccup said. She enjoyed seeing him serious and determined but not when it was aimed at her. "You can't go back. Here."
He handed he the canteen and she drank.
Hiccup sighed and a brief compassion came over him. "What did you find?"
Waters around the island were unnaturally still. The only ripples came from the fishing boats.
"I don't like this." said one of the fishermen.
Chuck shook his head. He'd never seen anything like this. Before storms the waters grew calm, but not like this.
"Let's head back." one of the fisherman said and they all agreed. With no wind they were using paddles to aim all the boats back to the mainland.
"What is that?" "What the hell?" "Odin's breath."
These were just a few of the gasps as the island came into view. They should have seen the greenish blue of land against the horizon but instead they saw a vicious gray cloud. They got closer and closer but the fog did not alleviate. The fishermen and their boats sank into the fog. It was quiet save for the breathing of the men and the splashing of water against the boats.
The fog was thick enough to block out the sunlight completely. They struggled to find the docks and tie up the boats. The streets were disserted and the village was a ghost town.
"I'm going home. You all should to." one of the older fisherman advised.
They guys went their separate ways but there was no way Chuck was going home to just sit and wait for something to happen. He was going straight to the temple. That's where Esol was and he had to make sure that she was alright.
He ran through the empty and dark streets until he made it to the temple's massive doors. He banged his fists against them but no one answered.
"Hey!" Chuck shouted at the doors.
"They will not answer."
Chuck spun around to see that creepy woman that lived in the hut over the village. The villagers regarded her as some kind of wise elder but she gave Chuck a chill when she looked at him. Her eyes were dark and could stare straight into his soul. Lydia, they called her.
"Why not?" Chuck asked.
"You must get in side." Lydia said with urgency. "The malice has spilled and it will swallow you whole."
"What?" Chuck asked.
"You must come with me. It is not safe out here." Lydia urged, almost pleaded.
Chuck looked back at the temple trying to place his argument in words.
"You are no use to Esol if you are taken." Lydia said. "Come with me."
Chuck didn't want to be he followed her. They went back through the village at a pace he didn't think she was capable of. They went back to her high hut where several children couched in a corner upon their arrival.
"It is only me, children." Lydia told them. Their relief was visible one their tired faces. She turned back to Chuck, "Sit, I will make you something to drink."
She stroked a fire in the hearth and boiled herbs in water. The soothing smell of warm grass and flowers filled the little hut. She placed a hot cup of the tea in his hands.
"Can you tell me what's happened?" Chuck asked. He'd thought this was supposed to be paradise.
"The malice has spread. They have shut the temple doors to protect the village from it. No one gets in or out." Lydia said.
"But why is this happening?" Chuck asked.
Lydia sighed. She answered him darkly, "Something has angered it."
Chuck opened his mouth to speak but she spoke first, putting a hand up between them.
"Please, ask me no more about it. I have been sworn to secrecy and I cannot break that vow.
"What am I supposed to do? I can't just sit here while Esol's in there." Chuck said.
"We are powerless against the malice." Lydia shook her head.
"What, are we supposed to just sit here and wait until it goes away?" Chuck asked He was almost shouting.
Lydia shook her head. "It is not of this world. It comes from the beyond. There is nothing we can do about it."
"The beyond?" Chuck asked. He thought for a moment and left his blank eyes staring at Lydia. She was watching him but he didn't care. "Astrid!
"Astrid?" Lydia asked.
"Yeah, she's a friend of Esol's and mine. She can talk to dead people and stuff." Chuck jumped up and spilled his tea. He sat the cup down and dried the hot liquid on his clothes.
"Astrid? Of Berk?" Lydia asked.
"Yeah." chuck nodded. "Do you have something I and write a letter on?"
"I am sure I do." Lydia said. She searched her home and came back with paper and a small jar of dark ink.
She stood over him while he scribbled a letter to Hiccup and Astrid. She said nothing but Chuck didn't care. This was too important to care about other things right now.
"How will you get this to them?" Lydia asked.
"I'll sail out and wait for one of the traders to show up." Chuck said. "I know Johan isn't due for a while but maybe I can pay another to take it to him or to Berk. I'll get it there. Don't worry."
"It is dangerous out there." Lydia warned.
"I don't care. I have to do something." Chuck said.
"Are you going to save us?" A little girl clutch his pant leg.
"I'll do what I can." Chuck patted her on the head.
"And in the meantime I will do what I can to keep the people safe. I will look for people and bring them to the communal building outside the temple. It is big enough to house many. We must be strong and have faith and patience." Lydia told Chuck and the kids.
"Right." Chuck said as he folded the letter. "I'll see you later."
Lydia nodded him a goodbye as he left the warm house for the cold outside of the village.
"Are you sure that is what you saw?" Hiccup asked.
"I'm sure, Hiccup. I mean, it went by fast but I'm sure." Astrid nodded.
Hiccup had waited until Astrid could at least stand up without falling over to let her leave the cavern. She'd flown down on Toothless with him to village. She began telling him of what happened in the spirit world and when they landed on front of her house she had just finished telling him about the robed man and the temple.
Hiccup slide from the saddle and held a hand out to Astrid. She didn't like being treated like this but she needed to be. She ignored his hand and tried to get down on her own and fell. Hiccup caught her but she pushed him away. She hatred being weak and useless, he knew, but was he suppose to just let her fall?
"Whatever happened in he spirit world was caused by whatever those people were doing." Astrid said with certainty. "I want to go back and investigate or something."
Astrid pushed the door open. Ingrid wasn't home and the house was quiet. Hiccup escorted her upstairs to her room. Hiccup had suggested that she rest and she had agreed, although reluctantly.
"Worry about it later, Astrid." Hiccup said. He hoped to Thor that she would listen to him for once. "You need to rest. We'll talk about it when you're feeling better."
"Fine." Astrid shrugged. She plopped down on her bed.
"Astrid," Hiccup said. "I know we agreed to tell our parents at dinner but maybe we should postpone that."
Astrid made a sound that sounded like an agreement. Hiccup pulled the blanket over her and before he'd put on foot on the stairs he could hear her gentle breathing and occasional snore.
Hiccup didn't know what to do. The spirit world was the one place that he couldn't go with her. She was one her own and he hated that. This was one part of her life that he couldn't help her with.
Back outside he patted Toothless. He gave Hiccup a carefree nudge and a face that Hiccup had learned to appreciate as a smile. Stormfly retreated to the stable beside Astrid's house and curl up. Hiccup offered her a flight around the island with Toothless and him but she sighed. She wasn't going without Astrid.
And that's chapter 5! Didn't feel like I was going to get out of that blasted block but I did. Thank goodness for Minecraft, right? And thanks for the reviews! Keep them coming! I'd love to hear what you guys think.