Eventually I started to regain consciousness and was aware of a light that was far too bright glaring at my eyelids, which remained firmly shut. I could hear voices around me but I couldn't place the people and only caught brief phrases.

"Is she dead?" Followed by a slapping sound and then

"Idiot"

I lost focus for a second as I tried to force my eyes open and my body to move but everything felt too heavy so I just listened again.

"You know, I swear we said that we would try not to break any of her bones before school even started"

"Well, we didn't break anything to be fair"

"Concussion and countless cuts and bruises count though!" That voice was definitely female and I was very close to laughing at her outraged, high pitched tone. As they continued debating what was presumably my condition, I became aware of other voices around me, from the tones, I swear there are like twenty people here. I wonder where here is. With that thought I tried again to open my eyes and they fluttered slightly and then opened. My vision was foggy but I could make out vague blurry shapes.

"Hey look, she's up!" I smiled and blinked a few times, trying to make everything go in to focus. Eventually I could make out all of the people around me, and I was right, there are about twenty. Twenty guys covered in mud, and one girl, equally covered in mud. As I looked past them I could see the sky, excellent, I hadn't been out cold for very long at all.

"Right, out the way guys, I need to do a quick check up" Sam pushed through with a large bag in his hand. He knelt down in front of me and proceeded to carry out a test that I'd been through so many times I could have just told him the results anyway, I had mild concussion and a huge bruise on my right hip. I tried to stand up and nearly fell back down again, better add lightly sprained ankle to the list. Instead of letting me put pressure on my leg Sam simply picked me up and slung me over his shoulder.

"Come on Sam, put me down, it's only a little bit sprained, it's not that bad"

"Yeah, yeah, just a light sprain, I'm still not going to let it get any worse by you walking on it" And with that he walked off towards one of the school buildings while most of the people on the pitch regrouped and I think they were probably about to restart the game. However, Abi and someone whose name I didn't know were following us as well.

"Okay, Sam, if you're not going to let me walk will you at least carry me in some way that isn't so obscure?"

"Sure" He shrugged and then pulled one of my legs around his back and moved my hands around his neck so I was now having a piggy back. I was suddenly very thankful that I had chosen to wear trousers.

"You know, when you were carrying her just then kind of reminded me of like one of the seven dwarves carrying a sack of stuff or something" The person whose name I didn't know said and Abi then started laughing before saying

"Oh my god, do you remember when my dance teacher suggested I tried out for a dwarf in the pantomime and you guys all came along too?"

"Oh god, that was hilarious, and when you didn't get it because you were about five inches too tall and your dance teacher was like, oh, I was so sure you'd get it, you're perfect for a dwarf" Sam said imitating a very high squeaky female voice.

"And I was like, what, cos I'm so short, fat and hairy?" At this three of them started laughing.

"Oh god, and she was like, no that's not what I meant, you're just strongly built"

"And I decided to get all offended and be like, oh so you're calling me fat now!"

"And then Steve walked up and said to her, Miss your hole has been dug quite deep enough now and we were all just like 'uh huh'"

"Don't forget the simultaneous hip twist and eye roll" Sam butted in and at this I couldn't help but fall in to hysterical giggles.

We turned a corner and Sam shouldered open a door that I hadn't even seen before and led us down a very narrow corridor.

"Where are we going?"

"Oh yeah, I suppose you don't know about this place, it's the den"

"The den?"

"It's the rugby team's secret hiding place, it has a passage of tunnels underground to almost all of the places in the school, and it's rather awesome. All of the hidden passages come to here but they all link as well, which is incidentally how us rugby lot are never actually late, even when practise over runs."

Wow, this place just gets more and more amazing by the second, I think I'm in love… with a building. Okay, maybe I'm going slightly insane. I swear that maybe an old stone building with ivy and secret passages sounds a little typical of movies and books. It's like the stereotypical England scene, maybe I ought to go out and look around somewhere else in England, it can't all be like this right?

As we went through, Abi flicked the light switch and a luxuriously decorated, a thick beige pile rug covered the floor and there were brown leather sofa's scattered around the room, mostly collected around the 40 inch plasma screen. There was also a pool table and a card table on which was a vast quantity of cards and chips all in neat piles. As we walked through the room a separated section came in to view which consisted of a well stocked bar. It looked like a mafia hide out or something, and I got the feeling that the teachers would freak out if they ever found it.
"How do you even keep this a secret?"

"Easy, the door that we came through is the only door that comes in to this but there's a complex mechanism on the door so that only those with the key and code can get in, otherwise it just opens to the back of the stables. You can thank Alex for our hide-out system, if you ever manage to drag her out of the resistant materials rooms or the library. The rest of the passages all rely simply on people not knowing that they exist and the other passage doors in to this room have their own systems as so it doesn't matter if they do find them." I tried to absorb all of that as Sam placed me on the sofa and switched the TV on. I really wouldn't have thought of the rugby team to be running a passage system similar to that of the underground systems of thieves from so many years ago.

I would just want to say that I absolutley loved all the reviews, i did actually do a little dance and then proceeded to infuriate all my friends with my excitement and happiness, so thank you so so so much, i love you all!

On another note,
I know, I know, I'm an awful person for not updating in so long and I'm really really sorry, I could give you all my reasons but it would be likely that the list would be longer than this chapter, so I'll just say that all the time I've spent at home recently has been spent as sleeping time, which I'm seriously lacking at the moment.

I spent the whole day in Amsterdam yesterday (on work experience, not in the red light district lol) so I'm extremely tired but I thought I ought to write some more, If this chapter sucks just tell me, I can deal, I'm not sure if this chapter is really pushing the kind of stereotypical English thing, but I like it and the description is very similar to the layout of the 'den' we have in my house, so yeah. Let me know if you think it's too much and I'll just re-write this bit. Next chapter should be up at some point tomorrow even though I'm meant to be revising for my textiles GCSE

Review please :)

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