Chapter Twenty-Two: A Tight Squeeze

Just focus, Lloyd. Just. Focus.

His breathing was starting to become difficult again. As he ran through the alleys, twisting and turning to keep the Serpentine away, his chest began to pulse with sharp pain each time his lungs desperately reached for air. The heat of this place wasn't making things any easier either. The sun shot burning rays at his skin, forcing exhaustion into the young man's body quicker than it should have.

"Why are you running, little hero? If you're so great, why don't you destroy us?" Lloyd turned sharply, ignoring the shouts of the Serpentine behind him. He wondered how they could still talk while running at this pace. Lloyd could barely even breathe, much less come up with a good come back for his enemies. He turned again, but it was too fast. His feet slipped out from under him and he slammed against the sand.

Pain flooded his body, emerging from the left side of his body. Black dots danced in and out of his vision as the pain pulsed through him. Lloyd sat up, scrambling backwards, trying to stand up again, but his left arm was now useless as the impact had dislocated his shoulder. The Golden Master was off balance now and the pain was rendering him useless.

The Constrictai caught up in no time.

One of them grabbed Lloyd roughly, lifting him up by pulling on his injured arm. The pain was unbearable. Lloyd's vision blacked out and his consciousness slipped away. When his mind returned to itself, the young man was back in the town's center, surrounded by Constrictai guards. The villagers swam in and out of the edge of his vision, watching the show before them with fearful eyes.

They're gonna kill me in front of all these people, Lloyd thought, his body beginning to shake. If I'm the Golden Master, why can't I do anything? I'm going to die and I can't put up a fight...

The hallways sprawled on endlessly as Kai gripped the golden staff in his hands as tightly as he possibly could. Glancing down quickly, he saw the skin of his knuckles fading to a pasty white. "Come on, Zane," he urged, trying to keep his focus on the task at hand. "Where do we turn again? We need to get out of here now!" Letting Lloyd offer himself up as bait was a stupid idea and they were all idiots for agreeing to it. Lloyd did not have to prove himself yet. He would have the opportunity when the time came, and they all should have realized it. "Zane!"

"Please, try and keep yourself calm," Zane said, taking a quick right turn down a smaller corridor. They were en route towards the room that they had initially found the seeds in. The entrance was not far from that. "If you let your anxiety overwhelm you, then you will fail. The only way for us to reach Lloyd and aid him is to quickly and efficiently show the serpents that we now have the staff. Yelling at everyone will not get us to Lloyd any faster."

Kai knew that Zane was right. The android always seemed to know what was going through their minds before they even really knew. It had taken so long though, defeating the Constrictai leader. Had it really taken long though? Time felt distorted and elongated. Maybe it had all happened really quickly in actuality. As suddenly as the thoughts raced through Kai's mind, his heart fluttered in his chest. Before he registered what was happening, the blacksmith was on the ground, staff tumbling out of his grip and across the marble floor. His own breathing sounded far away and ragged as he watched Zane come to a screeching halt in front of him.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Blinking slowly, Kai craned his neck to see Jay looming over him, worry written across his face. "I-I'm fine," the brunet grunted, shakily getting to his feet with Jay's help. The puppeteer had taken Kai's left arm and slung it over his shoulders , supporting most of his friend's weight. "Sorry, I still feel a little weird. Probably from the seeds. I'm fine though." He saw his friends gather around, sharing concerned glances and causing Kai's temper to flare. "Are we really just standing around? I'm fine. Lloyd's not. We need to keep moving!"

"Pythor will be glad to hear about the end of your life, boy," a Constrictai whispered to Lloyd, allowing his body to drop against the sand. Lloyd didn't move. His eyes shifted around, focusing on the villager's faces. They all looked at Lloyd with disappointment. This boy isn't a hero. Lloyd could swear all of their eyes were shouting that phrase, over and over. He closed his eyes, the pain from his shoulder sending him dangerously close to the edge of consciousness again.

"You will not defy the Serpentine," another Constrictai shouted, slithering forward. Lloyd knew he must be the leader of the guards within the village, as only the Serpentine with higher ranking grew tails. The young man had always thought it was a silly way to showcase authority, but as the Constrictai used its tail to whip Lloyd's unprotected back, he understood the system.

Tails made excellent weapons.

"None of you can beat us," the Constrictai continued, wrapping its tail around Lloyd's body now. "This idiotic child believes himself to be the Golden Master and, for this, he will be punished. Let his death stand as an example to all of you. You are inferior. You are pathetic. You cannot overthrow us."

The tail around Lloyd's body began to tighten.

"You are not fine though," Zane said, his face emotionless once more. "Kai, you were poisoned, even if it was only for a short period of time. Yes, any hallucination you may have had are more than likely gone, but your body still needs time to recover. You are weak."

Weak? That was the last thing Kai ever wanted to be was weak. He huffed like a child and pulled his arm away from Jay as quickly as he could. "I'm fine," he growled, feeling his body quiver slightly as he once more supported all of his own weight. It's nothing. You're just shaky from adrenaline, the blacksmith repeated in his head. Lloyd was out there waiting for them and they needed to help as soon as possible. "We need to just go." With that, Kai procured the staff from the ground and tried to fall back into the steady rhythm of running. "I need to know where we're going, Zane."

The android had caught up with his friend in no time at all, keeping pace with him. "Just one more left up at this approaching intersection and the doors to the temple will be there." He sneaked a quick look back to see Jay running right behind them and Cole trying his best not to get left behind. Zane addressed Kai again. "Lloyd is of the utmost importance right now, but perhaps we should take care of this and you can go back to the Jaymobile and rest up."

"Not a chance," Kai answered in a curt manner, flexing his fingers around the staff once more as they finally made it to the final intersection and veered to the left. "We're sticking together on this one." The large, sandstone doors that marked the entrance to the temple were growing with each step. Gritting his teeth against an unbalancing sensation, the blacksmith turned his right shoulder towards a single door and burst through it as the blinding sunlight now beat down upon him.

Lloyd couldn't breathe.

He couldn't see either. The world had long since gone dark. There was a heavy pressure on his head. He felt as if his skull was going to crack open. His chest was nothing more than a never-ending whirlwind of pain. He could feel his ribs being pushed to their limit and he knew that soon they would crack.

Hopefully Lloyd would have lost consciousness by then.

The Constrictai continued to talk as he squeezed, but Lloyd couldn't pay attention. His brain was nothing more than a loud buzzing of panicked thoughts. Where were the others? Had they failed? Or would they simply arrive too late?

Lloyd didn't want to give up. His friends were coming. They had to be. They would save him. If he just allowed himself to fade away then he would doom the world to suffer under the Serpentine forever. He had to be strong. The old man had said that Lloyd was special. The old man had believed in Lloyd. There must have been a reason for that.

If Lloyd gave up now, he'd never find out what Wu had seen in him.

One of his ribs cracked. Lloyd whimpered as he began to lose control of his body. He felt heavy...heavy...

Feeling disoriented, Kai feverishly scanned the town that sprawled out in front of them. Where could Lloyd be though? He had run off, leading the Serpentine away from the temple and from them. The kid could still be running around aimlessly for all they knew. "Come on, Lloyd...we can't help you if we don't know where you are..."

"Whoa, look at all the people over there," Jay mused, pointing towards the center of the town. Kai followed his friend's hand and finally saw the same scene. A countless number of townsfolk had formed a crowd where Lloyd had initially started his distraction. From their current vantage point, he could not actually see what was happening, but something in his gut was telling him that it was not good. Apparently the feeling was shared. Jay turned towards Kai, his face growing pale. "We need to get there fast," he gulped.

"Then let's not waste time," the merchant replied, rushing past the others and flying over the compacted dirt that acted as a path through the town. "I'm pretty sure people don't just gather around because they feel like it'd be fun." The lack of guards surrounding them struck Cole as odd as he continued to sprint towards the group of people. Lloyd had definitely done his job, just like he had promised. "I don't see any snakes around here."

Zane was scanning the area ahead of them as they trekked onward, his vision turning up some interesting results. "There are actually many Serpentine heat signatures sprinkled throughout the crowd, though they are highly concentrated towards the very center of it all. There is some else in the very center too. A human."

Kai tried to ignore what Zane was saying as he roughly pushed a few stragglers in the crowd aside and unceremoniously jumped to see above the heads of the people that sprawled out in front of him. His heart fell into his stomach as he saw a figure with familiar blonde hair tight in the grip of a Constrictai. "No," he shouted, landing on the ground hard and starting to shove his way through the sea of people in front of him.

"It's not..." Jay started to ask, but let the question hang in the air. Kai's reaction had already answered it. They needed to get to Lloyd as quickly as possible.

Luckily for them, it was easier than they had expected. As soon as the people spotted the staff in Kai's hands they parted, making space for him and the others. Whispering rang everywhere they went. The people became excited, realizing what the staff in a human's hands meant. Kai didn't have time to stop and be congratulated, however. When he noticed the effect the staff had on the villagers, he raised it high, running forward as fast as he could.

"Stop," he shouted. "Put that boy down right now. I command you!"

Kai's words allowed Lloyd to hang on to consciousness. They were here. He was safe. They'd done it. The Constrictai strangling Lloyd looked up, wondering what kind of human would dare boss him around. Then he spotted the staff. The Serpentine quickly released Lloyd, slithering back and bowing at Kai begrudgingly. The rest of the Serpentine quickly caught on. Soon all of the Constrictai were bowing and the people around them cheered loudly, deafening each other with unnecessary screams of excitement.

The blacksmith could have cared less. He ran to Lloyd, shoving the staff into Jay's arms before kneeling beside the boy. Lloyd's eyes shuddered open and the world around him slowly transformed from a mesh of colors into Kai's concerned face. The Golden Master forced a smile.

"I...I was starting to think you guys had forgotten about me..."