AN: Next chapter yay, just wanted to say that the bits like /this/ are thoughts. Happy reading, please let me know if any of you object to traditional Yogscast language. I need to know before I can write the next chapter. Thanks and hope you liked it.
It wasn't the blistering heat that woke Toby, nor the acidic smoke. It was the screaming. Screams of pain beyond words, and the screams of his best friend: Martyn. He only made it to the doorway before he fell onto his hands and knees, body racked by violent coughing. Smoke swirled dangerously at the edges of his vision, burning his throat and stinging his eyes to make him cry. The heat intensified and the smokey haze thickened and twisted into dark, threatening spirals each seeking a way to be his end.
It seemed to last a lifetime, to Toby it felt like it, but in truth it was about two minutes. Not much time but enough to make a definite change for the worst. He couldn't draw breath, nor find salvation in clean air, of which there was litlle now. The flames danced through the forest, left tinder dry by the harsh sun of the last week, advancing forever closer and leaving an unsaveable wasteland of chatcoal black in its wake.
When the fit ended, Toby fell to the floor and felt like just laying there and if the end was coming, let it. But the screams went on. Somewhere in them he found the will to rise but his limbs refused to fully cooperate and in a shambling fashion he stumbled outside. The flames rose high and left nothing untouched. Just as any fire will but something about them was, wrong. He span around in a circle and his suspicions were confirmed, a perfect circle with a uniformity unknown to nature. Yet this was no experiment gone out of control either. Someone wanted them dead. /No time now./ he thought and looked about francially for Martyn then it registered: a gap in the circle, a tall and charred tree, Martyn hanging from the branches, silence. No screams, Martyn laying lifeless in the tree's dying embrace, a figure glimpsed through the gap in the circle but hidden in smoke. The killer had come to enjoy the execution. The deadly fire dashed across the gap to conceal it's creator from his sight and the man smiled as the fire served its purpose. To burn, to destroy, to kill.
Stumbling backwards he turned and ran as best he could in his poor state to the only gap left in the deadly circle which was rapidly shrinking in size. The shifting flames scittered across the opening to create a thin curtain. It was go through or die at the heart of the flame. Toby preformed the greatest of pointless leaps through the small fire barrier and screamed in agony as it burnt his flesh. Almost as if in a last ditch attempt to kill him, the flames surged forwards but stopped as they entered the area where all potential fuel had been consumed. He lay panting, seized suddenly by a fit of spasms that made him writh and gasp. White lights appeared from no where and danced across his sight, even when he closed his eyes.
Then with the suddenty with which it arrived, the fit passed leaving him feeling washed out and horribly weak. Yet somehow Toby mustered the strength to drag himself away from the fire which twisted and hissed angrily about his escape from almost certain death. He had to warn the others, /There's a killer on the loose.../