Chapter 10
Darkness
Darkness
Darkness
Consuming, and sweet. It reached, and touched, and grabs hold. It won't let go, so don't let it hold you, Child. I have made that mistake, and now I pay. Stay away from here, you don't belong.
The Beast is after you, now. He seeks your soul to join mine in this Darkness. Beware of the Beast.
Beware
Beware
Beware of the Darkness
Beware of the Beast
Do not turn back now, stay in one place, keep forward. Backwards in not open for you. Don't let the door disappear, go through before it closes. Don't make the mistakes I did, don't pay like I have to.
Beware of the Beast
Beware of the Darkness
Beware
Beware
/-/-/
Then next few weeks passed quickly. I soon earned the rest of amulets without much trouble, and thankfully didn't have the same problem as the first time. I melted into my niche pretty easily, too. I was natural born flyer; both loving it and being really good at it.
Pilots had interesting social lives within the walls. We were like the elite, and were treated as such. It took some getting use to, people coming up to us and asking if they could buy us beers and such of the like. Vi told me that it was because, along with groundling counter parts, we were the ones who brought in the wealth.
We were the ones that spotted the treasures that were stuck in the sand, and brought down the bigger dino-heads. The cars could take them down too, but it took fewer resources to just land on their backs and shoot through the gap in their armor.
As the time passed, I began to wonder when Jak was going to show up. I missed him and Daxter, and wanted to see their reaction to me when they finally saw me again. I hoped they weren't going to be angry.
The answer to my question came to me one day when Vi and I were cleaning up the glider landing. Zel landed the glider on the metal ledge, making the thing shudder a little under the extra weight. The male elf hopped off the machine, a grim expression on his face.
"Whassit?" Asked Vi.
"Flyin' over Haven, takin' a peek at the 'head situation. There was fire ev'rywhere! The palace is gone, a pile o' rubble strewn halfway 'cross the city."
Vi's eyes widened. I had learned from the girl that her and her brother were torn away from their parents after the dead town attack, and taken to the fortress. They tried to put Vi the DWP but they broke out before the Baron did any real damage to her. They went to the wasteland to get away from the Baron and were found by Damas. That was all they told me, but they were real tight lipped about the whole thing. I knew there was more but didn't want to press until they told me themselves.
"Mom and Dad…" Vi whispered.
Zel didn't say anything.
The girl suddenly scowled. "That's fine, they can rot in that cesspool for all I care. They are the ones that left us."
She always blew me away whenever she dropped the slummer accent that she always carried and talked properly. She always made a point of talking without proper grammar, but seemed to slip when stuff got to her. It made me wonder who she was really that made the Baron want to make her dark warrior.
Zel scowled as well. "Vieres, it ain't their fault."
"Yes it is!" She shouted. "They are the ones that told the Baron."
Curiosity killed the cat… "Told the Baron what?"
Vi looked at me like she wanted to bite my head off. "Nothing." She said nothing else as she mounted her glider, started the engine, and took off into the late afternoon sky.
I looked over at Zel. "Well?"
He shook his head, looking worriedly after the girl. "Just a mix up," he replied. He suddenly turned and smiled at me. "She'll be fine, just needs ta blow off some steam."
I frowned at him, silently willing him to tell me, to trust me.
He just shook his head. "She use' ta go ta this… academy." He waved his hands. "Dunno, did somethin' ta her head. Never was the same when I finally got her outta the prison."
Zel didn't say anymore as he moved away from me and down the staircase. More confusing information for confusing people. Oh well, I'll find out more, later. The good news is that Jak will be coming soon.
/-/-/
I sighed softly as I looked down at the ground. I could see the cars milling about far below me, a wall of sand coming off from the west. At least I thought it was the west, it was coming down from the setting sun.
Pre-storm winds were mixing up the sand and revealing buried treasure. However, nothing was of interest here, so I moved over the mountain range and into a new are. Something caught my eye as soon as I crested the rocks, laying far below in sand. It was blue., and vaguely human looking.
Suddenly the signal radar in my pocket started shrieking to all the Precursors. Pilots had mini-radars in their pocket in case something was still working but buried beneath the surface. If stuff still worked enough to send off a signal, then it was worth nearly three times as much as the usual finds.
I swept away, looking for the nearest car. I found one only a few miles away from my find, and was surprised to find it was the King's armored buggy. I knew he liked to join the ground scouts every now and then, but never before a storm, it could messy. But yet there he was, shining his mirror at me, no less.
I took a dive toward him, stalling my exhaust as I came in steady, preparing to land. He waved me in as I touched down and pulled up the engine lever. The lever was so the engine could start up again right away, to get away from the ground the fastest possible.
"Found someone," I yelled over the wind and his engine.
"Havenite?" He asked simply, a little bitterness in his tone, but also excitement. "Were they moving?"
"No, not moving. Had a beacon, though. Wasn't sure if it was a Havenite or not, I didn't go down to him." It was too dangerous right now, even stupid of me to be sitting here talking to my king, I had no protection except his guns, and my rifle strapped to my back. Thus being so, I pulled down the lever and with a rushing sound from my engine, I jerked up into the air. "I'll take you," I yelled as the machine shot off, then up on my direction.
I pulled the black scarf around my neck up to my face to protect my mouth from the increasing sand storm. I pushed the machine a little, feeling the air current jostle the wings a little. This was getting too nasty to be out.
The little bug in my ear suddenly went off. A voice came through a moment later. 'All pilots please report back to the city walls. Repeat: all pilots report back to the city walls.'
That was my cue to hurry back before the wind took me where I didn't want to go. From the corner of my eye, I watched a flare come up through the dense sand clouds, telling me that my king had lost sight of me.
I reached down slowly, trying to keep the machine steady and turned on my flag light as the bottom of the glider, falling back to where the flare had first come up. For a few seconds I didn't see or hear anything but then I heard the retching sound of his machine gun and knew he was below me.
I pushed the glider forward again until I came up on the spot. The sand wasn't as bad over here then on the other side of the rocks, so I was able to see the King wave me off, telling me to go back to the city.
I pulled up and off, confident with whoever had been stuck out here, was saved by the King himself.
XXX
A/N: Hello, and goodbye. Jak will be in the next chapter. I'm happy, tho, because I went back last night and tried to plan this story out a little more. So I decided that, since this story already has the gliders in it, I'm going to tie this with my bigger project. There is a big gap in the story line in TFMS, so I thought I would fill it with this. Nothing really big but it fit together really well.
Broken Wolf/D.R.M.