Claxia~ Reality's twist

[Jetx]

PG-13 for gore and bad language in later chapters.

This is another fic by me, I won’t call it a fan fic, cos it’s completely made up by me. I put a lot of effort into this one, please take that in before calling it rubbish. It’s called Claxia~ Reality’s twist. Confused? So are the characters in this fic, please enjoy.
I've decided to keep this fic a chapter behind the breloom woods one. I've already done chapter one.
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Prologue: Senseless Signs

The star-filled sky was glittery with lights as was the city below. But not for long, wind howled and rushed into the streets of the city, suddenly the lights snapped off and there was bitter silence.

THUMP! Thump, thump. The window of one of the houses rattled. Thump, thump, thump.
“Ugh?” asked a tired girl who was woken up by the noise. Her eyes closed again and she hoped it was her imagination, but deep down she knew it wasn’t. The same thing happened every week. Thump!
“No, please no!” she said loudly holding her eyes shut and wishing it would go away. There was a final thump and then silence. The girl stretched her arms and dropped off her tatty bunk-bed. She reached out for the light switch and flicked it on. Then she suddenly felt scared.
“I’ll do it in the morning.” She told herself in fear.

It was morning, people were scattered about on the streets questioning the mayor.
“Why do we get these weekly power cuts?” the people shouted angrily, the mayor had no idea and kept saying he didn’t know.

The girl was woken up by angry people shouting questions, she had decided that she’d go out after school and tell them all why. She pulled off her pink pyjamas and put on a pink shirt with a big red flower.
“Okay. I’ve gotta do it.” She said to herself. She reached out and grabbed a note which wasn’t there before she went to sleep. It read:
Claxia~ reality’s twist
She was relieved that it wasn’t bad but where was it coming from. She took her mind off the note and got excited about the non-school uniform day. She ran to the bathroom with her long, slim legs and combed her red hair. Just as she was putting on her hair band her watch started beeping.
“Hey wait, that alarm goes off at the same time as the school bell!” She said as she looked down upon her black wristwatch. She ran downstairs slipped on some red trainers, slid into the kitchen and picked up a tasty cereal bar. She shoved it down her throat and ran outside.
She looked around and the streets were empty, where were the angry people? She ignored the thought of another complicated sign and ran to school.

She arrived out of breath and yanked the big black school door open. The corridor was empty she was beginning to hope it was a sign and everyone had disappeared but she turned around and noticed a teacher wonder by. She hit herself on the head realising that she really was late; she stumbled into her classroom and looked up guiltily at her teacher.
“Amy! You’re twelve minutes late!” Her teacher said hiding her anger. “Do you have a reason for absence?”
“No miss… I overslept,” Amy replied as clear sweat slithered down her face. She sat at her desk and heard a strange laughter. She turned around and a boy with short black hair wearing nothing but black cloths. She put her hand into her hair and pulled out a long string of bubble gum. The boy laughed again.
“That isn’t funny you immature brat!” Amy snapped quietly.
“Amy! First you’re late and now you’re bullying our new student!” The teacher walked up to her and whispered “My office, first break.” The teacher turned her back and the black-haired boy laughed again.
“Hey, get lost you, you Claxia!” Amy whispered angrily realising what she called him.
“Claxia?” the boy asked. His eyes widened as if he’d heard it before. “Do you even know what Claxia is?” he looked down waiting for a reply.
“Reality’s twist?” Amy replied. e hoped he knew. “Do you know what it is?”
“No. I keep getting notes on the end of beds, one a week, usually threatening but odd this week, the notes I get, just senseless signs…” the boy looked down again.
“That’s odd; I thought I was the only one. Let me tell you, those threats aren’t lies, I know somebody who was killed because I disobeyed one…”
“Who?” asked the boy but they were interrupted.
“Amy! Ben! Why do you keep talking? Ben I’ll let you off because you’re new, but Amy, what’s gotten into you today?” the teacher snapped. “I shall be telling your parents about this!”
“My parents are dead,” Amy replied sadly with tears in her eyes. “The signs, the signs…”
-End of prologue-
^It’s a bit boring at the mo but trust me it gets good. Reviews welcome but don’t say it’s boring; it’s just building up to something real good!

 

[Jetx]

Chapter 1: A camper’s biggest fears(4 and a half pages)

The teacher lowered her glasses and looked stared in shock at Amy. But she wasn’t foolish; she tightened her stern, pink lips and then started looking angry.
“Don’t lie to me! I am a qualified teacher, trained to sniff out lies from pathetic teen-agers like you!” the teacher snapped. She grinded her teeth together like she usually would before handing out a detention. She stood up straight in her dull clothes and stared down as though she was showing off how she was taller than Amy. Amy sprang up and threw her wooden chair across the floor. She growled and stamped her black shoes against the floor furiously. The class turned to stone in shock, but Ben wasn’t surprised, he got out of his seat a lot more calmly and put his arms around Amy trying to calm her down. Amy shook them off and stomped to the door. Before she left clear tears slithered down her face and she sniffed. “I HATE YOU! I hate you all, none of you believe me, and I just hate you!” She burst into tears and covered her face.

Ben walked to the door calmly, ignoring the teacher’s warnings, but the teacher tapped her red high-heels against the floor as she stepped up to Ben and blocked the doorway.
The teacher closed her eyes and looked disappointed. Ben pulled some black gloves out of his pocket and put them on. The teacher still had her eyes closed waiting for Ben to apologize and take his seat.

After a while she opened them and saw Ben standing in front of the class window with clenched fists.
“You wouldn’t dare.” She said gritting her teeth.
Ben ignored her and pulled up his glove tighter. Then, in a split second, the window was shattered by his fist, sending glass particles all over the playground on the other side. Ben stepped onto the windowsill and jumped outside. He ignored the roar of his new teacher and ran to the school fence. It was a bunch of green bars. He grasped them tightly and felt how the heat of the sun had warmed it up. Then he pulled himself up until he reached the sharp points at the top of the fence. Then he flung himself off to the other side.

In the distance he heard weeping. He lowered his black eyebrows and focused, then he realised it was Amy.

Ben pelted towards her as fast as he could, but she was running too. He dashed through town pushing pedestrians away. He puffed and coughed but he could still see Amy. He was getting closer, but he began to worry as they left the jolly town and headed for dangerous looking mountain that sat in the distance.
“Stop it now Amy,” he groaned, Amy stopped running and turned around. “Why are you running to this mountain?”
Amy sighed and didn’t reply. She put her feet on the foot of the mountain and pressed her bare hands against her knees, then pushed herself up. She kept pulling herself higher ignoring what Ben said. Ben was a much better climber and soon caught up with her. He held his hands to her back.
“Stop it; I’m in more trouble then you.”
“You are?” Amy asked in confusion.
“Yes, the teacher blocked the door so I had to smash a window to get out!” Ben replied in an embarrassed way. Amy chuckled a bit, but she was overwhelmed by negative thoughts.
“Just shut up, Ben.” She said like it was a joke, but Ben knew wasn’t joking.
“Well, if you really don’t wanna go back. You should really know that I prefer to be called Blade.” He replied.
After a long chat they both got to a less vertical place in the mountain. They both sat down on the brown, dusty floor and had a rest. Blade was tired and he lay down, but he felt something on the back of his head. He turned his muscular neck and noticed he was leaning against two sleeping bags that looked like they’d never been used.
“Hey, Amy, sleeping bags. What a… Coincidence?” Blade said in confusion. Amy looked around the forest they were near. Then back down at Blade.
“Oh, this is no coincidence.” She said sadly. They spent the rest of the day looking at all the nature in the woods and having a good time away from their haunted lives.

When they returned to the camp they’d set up, they felt no need to go home. Amy lived alone and Blade suffered from depression. They felt no need to go home.
They both lay down in their sleeping bags and Blade got out a cigarette lighter and made a small fire. They lay down and slept.

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(Warning: This part of the chapter has gore, you may skip it, but it is quite important.)

Amy woke up and Blade was still sleeping. She yawned and walked into the woods. She sat on broken log, wondering what to do with herself. A second later she was tossed back by a mysterious force.

She was above the trees, twisting in the air. Then she slammed back against the edge of the mountain rolled down slamming her face against rocks and roots. She hit her ribs against a sharp, grey rock and was caught from falling further. She cringed and groaned and blood slipped out of her side.

Her eyes rolled up and she saw a giant green dragon swooping in the air. The dragon flapped its scaly, purple wings and swooped over Amy. Amy was thrown into the air again.

She slammed face first into her sleeping bag. She weakly looked at the dragon and noticed its skin and its wings were constantly changing colour. Blade shot out of bed and saw Amy lying, covered in glistening red blood. From his pocket he got out an illegal silver knife and charged up to the dragon. The dragon was much bigger than him and pummelled him with its long tail. Blade’s nose burst into blood and Blade rolled down a field of rocks and stopped rolling back at the camp. He was now weak too. But he got up.

Amy watched with her eyes half closed as Blade still thought he could kill it. The dragon swooped back down and landed, slamming its giant claws in front of him.
“You stupid dragon. Now, sell me your last breath, cos I’ll soon have it when I tear this knife through you neck!” Blade shouted swiping blood off his face.

The dragon wasn’t scared; it took off into the dark, gloomy sky.

Blade swung round as the dragon swooped past, but missed with his knife. The dragon slammed its tail against Blade’s face again. But Blade grabbed its tail and stuck his knife inside it. The dragon swung its tail round again and Blade was thrown off.

Blade stared at the knife he put in its tail. But lost all hope when the dragon pulled it out, threw it at Blade and then closed its eyes making the wound vanish. The dragon smiled as if he was only just beginning and had many more surprises to come.

Blade dived to the floor and grabbed his knife, this time he wanted to shove it in a place where the dragon would die before it could recover. He smiled as Amy got up looking a bit better, but still bleeding.

The dragon smiled again and opened its mouth spraying fire balls all over the forest. The tall trees dropped to the floor in glistening flames. Now Blade and Amy were surrounded by fire with nowhere to run.
“Oh, a fire-breathing dragon, how original!” Amy joked trying to cheer herself up.
But the dragon wasn’t any normal dragon; it carried on changing colour and then blasted ice at Amy and Blade. Blade jumped out of the way and landed on his sleeping bag. But he heard a scream and looked behind him.

Amy was there, with one of her legs sealed to the floor in ice. Blade ran up and kicked against the ice, but it didn’t even make a dent.
“Go.” Amy said with a tear in her eye as the dragon soared in the sky, ready to attack again. Blade refused to leave and started trying to melt the ice with his cigarette lighter, but it was useless.
“For god sake Blade, just go!” Amy snapped angrily. Blade had tears in his eyes and stepped back, wondering why she wanted him to give up on her.
“Why? Why, are you leaving yourself to die?” Blade asked ignoring the dragon, which was just waiting for them to finish.
“If you stay here, that dragon will kill us both at the blink of an eye; its fire is hotter than normal fire. Its ice is colder than normal ice. Just go, you’ll be a good distraction.” Amy sighed still wounded, but confident.
Blade stepped away and ran off.

The dragon focused on Blade, Blade span around and saw tons of dark water blasting towards him; if he were to get hit, the water would crush him, breaking all his bones. He dived forwards and skidded on the floor.

He was almost deafened as there was an almighty sound of the water crashing behind him. He lifted into the air as the water tossed him up in a wave. Blade swam rapidly, but the salt in the water felt like it was hacking at his wounds. He swam furiously and eventually got out of the water. The water crashed onto some trees which were on fire; creating an opening that Blade could run into.

Blade ran into the clearing, hidden in the grey steam and stepping over the black ash which were once trees. He lay behind a burnt log, relieved that he was hidden. He lay there catching his breath, he thought that it would only be a matter of time before he lying in the hospital, having a small operation. Then a thought came to his head. Amy.

He lifted his head and turned it towards Amy. Amy was screaming pulling her leg, trying to break the ice whilst the dragon was just hovering above her watching. The dragon stretched out its arm and covered Amy’s face with its hand, Amy suffocated and choked. Blade growled and clenched his fists on his knife.
“You dirty lizard!” Blade roared charging towards the dragon, who was now sitting on the floor. The dragon let go of Amy and she dropped to the floor.

Blade jumped into the air struck the knife into the dragon’s neck. The dragon roared and pulled the knife out of its neck. The dragon threw Blade backwards and turned back to Amy.

Amy slapped dust into the dragon’s eyes. The dragon blinked constantly and slammed its hand against the floor in fury. The ground shook and the ice cracked open.

Amy dashed off to Blade and pulled off his black shirt, which was wet with sweat and the water that the dragon made. He was muscular and looked like he went to the gym a lot. Across his chest was a huge cut where some rocks had slashed him earlier.

Blade picked himself up and he and Amy got ready to strike the dragon and attack. Blade stood still and Amy walked closer to the dragon.

The dragon roared and black rocks and boulders lifted from the dusty ground. The dragon pointed its long finger at Amy and the rocks sped towards her.

Amy jumped into the air trying dodge or brace herself from the rocks.

“NO!” Blade shouted. Amy was distracted and turned her head. Blade was ready to dive in front of the rocks and take the hit. But he was too slow. His call had distracted Amy and she wasn’t prepared. There was loud sequence of thumps as Amy was pummelled by the rocks. Amy was thrown backwards and flew off the edge of the mountain. Blade ran to the edge and stared off.

Amy smacked against the floor and the rocks and boulders crunched onto her afterwards. Blood leaked from her body and she was still. Blade cried in pain and anger as he watched Amy being swamped over in her blood. He cried. Amy was dead.

He stood in front of the dragon and cried.
“Go on, take me, I’ll never be able to live with myself anymore!”
The dragon looked at him and smiled.
“Everybody falls to me,” it smiled. Blade widened his eyes at hearing it talk. It was a male voice. “Yes everybody, for I am the king of Claxia!”

Before Blade could reply he was shredded in the dragon’s flame and hit the ground, as ash, dead.
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Is it the end, or some terrible trick? Like I’d tell you!

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Geez, I wrote that ages ago, I know it sucks, so don't let it judge me....

 

[Jetx]

Chapter 2: Trespassing into fantasy (3 and a half pages)

Blade flicked his eyes open and moved his head violently, examining the area around him. He got out of his sleeping bag and looked around the open space he and Amy were in. The trees were dark and mysterious, it was as if the trees were bending towards him, and it wasn’t very pleasant. He took one last look at the area around him, and then sighed with relief.

“Just a dream, just one stupid dream,” he smiled again and looked over to see the lump in Amy’s sleeping bag. “We’re both still alive; it was just some dumb dream.”

He looked over at Amy’s sleeping bag again and waited a while for a response, but there wasn’t one. He leant over towards her, and almost screamed as he saw something horrific.

Amy’s face was pale, and still; her eyes just wouldn’t blink and she wouldn’t reply to anything Blade said. He clambered over her and stared into her face, ignoring the tears that trickled from his eyes. He held his hands to eyes and cried longingly for a while.

“I suppose we both had bad dreams,” called a voice from behind Blade, he turned around and stared into Amy’s eyes with a growing smile for each time she blinked.

“But, why were you all pale and not responding to me?” Blade asked scratching his spiky hair. Amy sat up and looked into his eyes; she then opened her mouth, but didn’t know what to say.

“I couldn’t control myself,” she sighed “I was just so scared. I couldn’t stop shivering and thinking about it, I almost threw up; I was sure I felt the pain I experienced in my dream. It was a horrible one about a dragon; it hurt me a lot more than it hurt you.”

“Same here, I could feel it, and I think we just shared a dream in Claxia,” Blade trembled. “It’s so late, like midnight; I want to go back to sleep but I’m too scared to.” Blade and Amy felt tears in their eyes, something had to be done.

“Wait a minute,” Amy held up a finger and had a worried smile on her face “what if it all of really did happen?” She looked over at Blade and both felt the same fear, pounding in their hearts.

Blade picked himself up, when suddenly the tiredness settled in and he collapsed onto the floor.

“AAARGH!” he groaned in pain. He rolled on the floor cringing and holding his right arm, in an enormous amount of pain.

“Blade, what’s the matter?” Amy asked, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small flip-phone. She flipped open and weak light beamed out onto Blade’s right arm, revealing a horrific wound.

Blade’s arm was covered in strong wet blood; crispy, dead skin bordered it and there was a horrid mark right in the center of the blood-puddle. A scar.

“I remember getting in that cut in our dream,” he groaned clutching his arm. He searched his body and almost screeched at the sight of scars, bruises and burns all over his body. Amy did the same, she had many cuts and bruises; it was a very nasty sight.

They both knew what to do, they had to get as far away from that freaky scene as possible, they weren’t afraid to spend days awake, they just had to survive no matter what.

The sun rose above the tall trees sending light all over the mountain. Treading light into the forests and revealing beautiful pink flowers that were hidden before. It was six in the morning and Amy and Blade had been exploring the mountain since midnight. The exploration was nowhere near complete; they didn’t want it to be complete; they were just hoping for a sign.

“I’m so tired,” Amy moaned, slumping onto a hollow log and resting against a tree. “We’ve been following this path for ages; it’s all a bunch of trees and no civilisation…”

Blade looked at her for a few seconds and then yawned, he sighed as he felt his tiredness setting in after only six hours. “We have to keep going,” he said in a deep and serious voice, pulling Amy by her shirt onto her feet. “I think I saw something over there.”

Amy sighed and walked back onto the dusty path, she continued walking for a bit, when she noticed it too. It was a large electric fence which went up very high, tangled with many wires and many circles of barbed wire right at the top. Behind the fence was tall and thick grass, of around chest-height. It was labelled with two signs, one saying ‘Electric Fence, could kill.’ And the other saying ‘Trespassers will be shot.’

She turned around to Blade, who put on his gloves and started looking for a good place to jump onto.

“Err, Blade, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she said, re-reading the warning signs. “You could get killed.”

Blade shrugged. “What do I have to lose?”

Amy tried to think of something to come back with. But before she could, Blade was hanging carefully on the barbed wire, hoping his gloves could manage it. He dropped into the field on the other side and had a strange smile.

“You idiot, this is your death wish, we were told to go to Claxia for a reason, suicide won’t get you anywhere.” Amy growled miming Blade to get back to her side of the fence.

“We’re still in the dragon dream, I don’t need to worry about death,” He smiled again, “purple rain, and it’s not natural, yellow polka-dot grass.” He spat on the grass and walked off, further into the field.

“Grr, are you on drugs? This is no dream; and what the hell are you on about, polka-dot grass…” she scowled and walked up to the fence, nearly touching, but remembering the electric.

“You come over here then, this is probably the sign we’ve been searching for,” Blade threw his black gloves over and Amy grabbed them. She felt she’d never make the jump. “The electric fence thing is a load of bull’. This guy has much better defences than that. This is a sign; the electric fence is just a cover-up.”

Amy hesitated a bit, but as she saw Blade reaching down to her, she jumped up and grasped his hand firmly. He pulled her over the edge and the both dropped down into the field below.

“I don’t believe it!” Amy shouted out loud, watching purple paint splatter onto her hands from the sky. It was incredibly weird. Everything was differently coloured and felt different to touch. They both knew very well that Claxia was nearby.

“We’re almost there, - already,” Laughed Blade as if it had been easy, he wasn’t scared at all about the warning signs, Claxia had to be nearby.

“There’s a house in the distance,” called Amy to Blade, pointing to a small house that was shrouded in mist. “That must be the way to Claxia.”

Blade nodded and they both ran on, shielding there eyes from the poisonous rain and stretching their legs to get out of the razor-sharp grass. They were around a quarter of the way to the house; the fence was about fifty metres away. The house was getting closer and closer, and the fence was further and further away.

“I think we’re gonna make it,” smiled Amy as she ran. She spoke too soon. Blade stumbled on something and fell into the sharp grass of the field, catching some nasty cuts, on top of the ones he already had. The rain splattered onto his eyes, and he screeched in pain. Amy just hoped the owner of the house wasn’t nearby. She nursed him back to health for about half an hour, when they suddenly went back to see what he stumbled on. It was a rotting, wooden trapdoor, and it wasn’t locked or anything.

“I’ll go in and see if it’s safe, if it is, I’ll tell you.” Blade said in a determined voice. Amy wasn’t going to disagree; maybe that trapdoor led to Claxia and the house was a dummy.

Blade jumped into the trap, it looked pitch-black from above, but inside it was actually very bright. Blade moved around and looked at the place; it was a cave which had been dug very well. There were strange purple spirals floating around and slithering lines of many different colours were on the floor.

Blade was about to tell Amy to come in, when he felt something tap on his shoulder. He turned around, ready to strike but when he realized what the man had, he didn’t. Blade backed up against the cold, stony wall, wet with sticky sweat and trembling continuously.

He remained still as a man prodded a silver pistol into Blade’s chest. He wore a large, brown jacket that starched all the way to his feet. A red hat which was very puffy, and some black trousers. He had a shaved moustache and a large nose, but he could not stop smiling to himself.

“Hello there, Blade.” The man said, as if he knew Blade’s name all along. “You’ll never make it Claxia alive!”

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I'm really getting into writing this, I'm gonna make it my main fic. ^_^

 

[Jetx]

Yay, new chapter. ^_^. Not that you'd care though, this fic is getting surprisingly little reviews... Lttle reviews on SPPf, anyway.

Chapter 3: Capture – at its worst. (2 pages)

Blade’s heart pounded in sheer horror, but he managed not to show it, apart from the sweat that dangled down from his hair to his face. He spread his arms across the wall and waited for the gunman to say something else. The gunman, however, was quite smart. He was somehow aware that Blade wouldn’t be alone, so he just waited to hear another voice, leaving Blade trembling at the gun in his chest.

“Blade, c’mon, is it safe?” Amy’s voice echoed down the trapdoor and into the cave, upon hearing it, Blade closed his eyes as if he’d failed life, and the man grew a much larger smile. Blade’s eyes burst open as the man’s empty hand flew into his neck, and threatened to strangle him to death. He nodded in a way that Blade knew what he meant, he was so angry at what the gunman was forcing him to do.

“Yes, come down, Amy, it’s actually pretty interesting.” Blade replied, trying to refrain from putting fear into his voice. Up on the surface, Amy could tell he was scared, so she went in expecting something rather nasty happen. She climbed down the ladder and into the cave below the fields, cautiously, and then turned around to see exactly what was happening. The man suddenly pulled the gun away from Blade’s chest and pointed it at Amy, still having his other hand close to strangling Blade.

“Amy, quickly, run!” Blade shouted, ripping the hand of the man away from his neck, the man was confused for a few seconds, wondering who to point his gun at. They both had a perfect opportunity to escape, but Blade’s anger came over him. The silver knife flung out of Blade’s pocket and he grasped it firmly with his hand. The man then knew who to point his gun at.

He jumped back aimed the gun right for Blade’s head, preventing Blade from being in striking-distance with his knife.

“Throw it here, now,” the man growled at Blade, now seeming very angry “give me the knife or I’ll shoot both your feet out.” At the risk of losing any good running escape plan, Blade tossed the knife between the gunman’s legs, it slid behind him. Amy slid back down the wooden ladder, back into the cave, she couldn’t leave without him. They both hoped with all their hearts that the man would turned around and pick up the knife, giving them a chance to escape; he was too clever to fall for it though.

The man leapt forward and jabbed his wide-open hand, powerfully into Blade’s neck, Blade choked and coughed, the strangling was too much for him. The man dropped his gun and pointed his spare hand’s fingers at the cave wall behind him; a giant steel cage suddenly appeared and the man signified Amy, telling her to get into it. Amy was too scared to move, but every second of trying to calm down, Blade was dieing more and more. She ran into the cage and locked herself in as soon as she saw Blade’s beginning to cough up blood.

The gunman pulled his hand away from Blade’s neck and retrieved his gun from the floor. Blade and Amy were too busy panting to even move. Blade was trying to recover, so he gave the man loads of time to pick up his gun and aim it at Blade again.

He told Blade to get into the cage, and so he did, they were now both locked in a steel cage that would be impossible to break out of. Amy tried to calm down Blade and helped him with his wounds for the next couple of hours, while the man just slept; it was as if he could rely on the cage to keep them locked in for all eternity. Over two hours had passed and Blade was still in shock, the man suddenly woke up and began to speak.

“You’d never survive in Claxia,” he laughed “if you’re scared by that, you’ll die at some of the average wild creatures in Claxia, let alone the king.” Blade had burning rage in his eyes as he looked at the man, his fists were clenched and all he could think about was the blood that man caused him to lose. Amy wasn’t angry at the man; she was hoping her hunch wasn’t right. But it was.

“I’ll show you what just one of the wild creatures is like, and then we’ll see who’s shocked. Get ready to meet, Crush!” the man walked off into an area of the cave which was hardly visible from the cage. Amy and Blade stood up and panicked for about a minute, until they finally heard a deafening roar.

A four legged creature ran into to the cave, Amy took in every detail of it as she stared in horror. It’s giant chest, its brown fur, its grey mane that ran along its back. Its blood-stained teeth, and fiery red eyes, its giant claws of each of its feet. Everything about it was horrifying. It was an automatic reaction for Blade to pull out his knife, but as he reached into his pocket, he remembered the man taking his knife away from him.

The beast launched itself towards Amy; she jumped back as the beast pounded onto the side of the cage she was watching from. The bars bent inwards towards the inside of the cage. That was when she really felt the fear.

The beast threw itself more and more against the side of the cage, but it suddenly realised an easier way to get in. Rather than ramming, the beast got onto its two hind legs and grasped one of the bars its other two feet. It then sank its teeth into the metal, in only a few seconds, the bars were bitten in half. It repeated the process for about five more bars until the gap was finally wide enough for it to get through.

Amy and Blade were more scared than they’d ever been in their lives, within a few seconds; the beast could simply rip them both apart. They felt tears running down their faces as they saw beast stare at them with only one thing on its mind, food. It sprang from its hind legs, towards Blade and Amy who were huddled in a small corner of the cage; they both shut their eyes as the beast jumped, hoping their deaths would be quick.

 

[Jetx]

2 chapters in two days.
4 chapters and 1 prologue, yet no reviews. How do you think I find the motivation to keep writing this? I dond't know either, I get reviews on other websites. So, I guess, if you enjoy writing it, it's kinda nice to have people rambling on about what bad about it. ;/

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Chapter 4: Truth in exchange for death (2 and a half pages)

There was loud bang. The cave came alive with deafening echoes that went all over the place, there was the sound of a groan, but then there was silence.

Amy didn’t want to open her eyes, but a few seconds later she felt an urge to, she turned around and saw Blade staring at something with wide eyes.

Just in front of them, only a couple of inches away lay the wheezing body of Crush. Blood leaked out of the four bullet holes which were spread across its rib area. It lay on its side, with an innocent look, as if it was a mere dog that’d never harm a living person.

“Ha-ha, the looks on your faces when the dog broke through,” the gunman came back into the cage are of the cave; he bent over and continued roaring with laughter “I can’t believe how scared you were. In Claxia, they’re some of the most common creatures, you’ll see one a couple of times every day, and they’ll be in packs of anything from one to twenty. They’ll see you and go for you, and no, they’re not one of the most dangerous creatures in Claxia. I can tell you a lot of things you didn’t know about Claxia, but it comes at a price, a price I’ll force you to pay, the price of painful torture or even death!”

“Will Crush survive?” Asked Amy, hoping she could distract him, but she also wanted to know out of interest.

“With a bit dark magic, he’ll make it through. Anyway, now for you to find out the truth about Claxia, you can run if you like, but missing out on this opportunity could mean that you’ll die without knowing anything at all useful about Claxia. Do you accept this offer, or do you want to just lie there all night?” Amy didn’t reply, she could quite easily see that the trapdoor was locked up and they couldn’t escape anyway. “I’ll choose for you; you’re gettin’ the info, and you’re gettin’ the pain.”

Blade hadn’t done anything the whole time, he’d hardly listened to what the man had been saying; as he stared into the suffering eyes of Crush, the beast, he realised just what he was dealing with. One wrong move could mean fourteen years of live gone to waste, and he may not ever live again. He began to listen to the gunman, he wanted to be knowledgeable, and he wanted to live.

“Claxia is an infinite land; it has no borders, it’s impossible to reach the edge of Claxia as it’s larger than even your universe. The current discovered area of Claxia is ruled by two great enemies, some call the sides Fraida and Beasta, and I am the guardian of the portal for Claxia. That’s why I don’t want you Fraiden invaders getting into Claxia and trying to overthrow Beasta rule. Anyway, Beasta currently rules Claxia, and that’s the way I want to keep it. Every year, whoever isn’t ruling Claxia has to send five or six invaders from Earth to conquer Claxia once and for all. Beasta’s last invaders were brutally murdered but Fraida, and a mighty Beasten dragon became the new leader of Claxia. So, it’s your choice whether you really believe that Fraida is ‘the good team’ or not. You two are invaders brought together by Fraida; and there are more of you. Judging by personality and gender, Amy is the leader of your group of invaders.”

Amy and Blade were fascinated by what they were hearing, there were more of them; and they were being relied on to conquer the infinite land of Claxia; and raise the Fraida up high. Blade was rather excited, but Amy was unsure. Though surprised to be the leader, she was really wondering whether she wanted to join Fraida’s side. Humans just like Amy and Blade had overcome their fears and conquered Claxia; rather than sending invaders to conquer; Fraida had executed human-beings who were no worse than Amy or Blade.

“Kid, come with me now,” the man smiled, looking at Blade “for trying to stab me earlier with that dagger of yours, you’re going to be the one who has to be tortured for hearing that information.”

Amy was still wondering which side to trust, but she was distracted as she watched Blade being knocked out and dragged into the deeper area of the cave. She was concerned for Blade, but she just had a guilty conscience at the thought of joining Fraida. She then stopped deciding and listened in horror to what was about happen to Blade. He had woken up; and he was about to be tortured.

“I like the taste of Fraiden potatoes; but only without their skin!” Blade and Amy both knew how the man was about to torture Blade. He was about to slice the skin off im with Blade’s own dagger!

Amy cried and lay on the floor as she listened to Blade screaming and crying. The petrifying sounds of suffering echoed all around her. She could hear rocks pounding against Blade with almighty strength; and she could hear Blade yelling in pain each time he was hit.

Two long hours later of listening to Blade’s suffering; the man dragged his unconscious body back into Amy’s cage. Amy suddenly remembered his burns from after the dream they had only a day before; she couldn’t stand imagining somebody slicing the skin off such a nasty burn. Not much of Blade’s skin was gone, but there were many patches of blood all over his body where he did get skinned. She also could see the bruises from the rocks he was hit with, purples and greens scattered across his body, there was even and bruise and cut on his head from one of the rocks; which was probably the one which knocked him out.

“You’re next,” The man laughed; he kept laughing as he saw the expression of fear on her face. “Or shall I just rape you?”

Amy’s heart pounded, each one of his words was like a bullet to her heart. But she’d decided; she was going to get revenge, and she was going to kill the leader of Beasta; and conquer Claxia in the name of Fraida.

“Are you ready for whatever torture I choose, or are you too ‘Fraida’ to listen to what I’m saying?” the man clearly thought he was funny; but he obviously wasn’t trying to make Amy laugh. “Don’t worry, I couldn’t rape you. It would make me a traitor to do such a thing in the name of Beasta, making such contact with an invader who was born to help Fraida. I guess I’ll just have to settle for the potato skinning and the rock pounding…”

Blade finally woke up, but he cried silently in pain from a few minutes earlier. He looked at Crush, who was now sleeping outside the cave; he’d made an amazing recovery from four bullet shots; and that gave Blade hope. Amy, however, was still sitting next to the body of Blade, scared to death of what was about to happen. She hardly noticed that Blade was awake.

“You guys are the most fun I’ve had since I became Beasta’s portal guardian. I’ve captured at least one invader for Fraida each year since we captured Claxia from Fraida’s hands; your emotions of fear shock and pain. You really do crack me up; it’s not as if I actually want to spend another two hours torturing you. You just went and believed every word I said. Go to sleep now, I’ll torture both of you together tomorrow. Should be fun, eh?”

The man turned around and walked into the darkness of the cave; leaving Blade and Amy in the cage. Though the cage still had a massive hole in it, Amy and Blade wouldn’t dare leave. They’d probably get lost in the cave and then brutally tortured if the man found them. Also, Crush could sniff them out wherever they ran.

“Blade, tomorrow we’re going to escape. I’ll set my watch for Five-AM, which should give you time to recover.” Amy was hoping she could just run and find a way out, as the man probably wouldn’t be around in the cave at that time. But little did she know, the spirals that floated around the cave were the eyes and ears of the place. The gunman could hear through them using his mind, and the gunman listened to the spiral near Amy and Blade; just as she was telling Blade the plan.

 

[Jetx]

I thought this chapter would be a short couple of pages, but I got carried away.

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Chapter 5: Magic attacks! (5 pages)

The watch on Amy’s arm rang a loud beeping noise that woke her and Blade up in less than two seconds. Blade had a bit of trouble picking himself up whereas Amy sprang off the cold floor she’d been sleeping on. Blade needed a bit of time to practise running with his injuries. While he did that, Amy stretched and warmed up, ready for a long and unpredictable escape.

“I think I can handle it,” Blade smiled with determination. “No matter what happens, stay together, we’ll escape.”

Their hearts struck many times with the suspense. There was no chance of getting out from the trapdoor method. It was blocked up and Crush was sleeping right beside it. So they began their escape plan, and ran off into the deeper cave area.

“Don’t turn right, it’s a dead end. The room I was tortured in.” Blade said as they came to a fork of paths. Eventually there were so many paths to choose from they ended up running in circles. The whole time, they didn’t notice the spirals of magic that hovered behind them, transmitting images of them running around to the gunman himself.

“Ha-ha, that’s one of the worst escape plans I’ve seen in my life,” the man laughed as watched them running around. He was looking into a spiral of magic which was a lot like a television, getting images from another spiral which was chasing Amy and Blade. “Time for them to come to terms with a bit of magic, Spirals, attack!”

Amy and Blade suddenly found themselves trapped in one of the cave’s paths. They had nowhere to run, the spirals blocked both behind them and ahead of them. Suddenly, one of the spirals morphed into a cobra and began to snap at Blade.

Blade grabbed the cobra and bent its neck onto its back. There was a snapping sound and the cobra crumbled into magic dust. Blade took as much of the dust as he could.

Another spiral approached him; this one became a metal disc. The disc was spinning incredibly fast and was as powerful as a chainsaw. Blade kept ducking and doing anything to avoid the twirling steel blade that flew towards him many times. He put on his gloves and punched a rock out from the cave wall. The disc shot towards him again, but this time Blade jammed it with a rock before it hit him. The disc smashed onto the floor and crumbled into more magic dust.

Meanwhile, Amy was also confronted with an animal and an object. One of the spirals in front her morphed into a massive poisonous spider, about twice the size of a human head. But the spiral had made one big mistake; Amy was no girl with arachnophobia. She picked a rock up from the ground and stabbed it into the spider’s head. The spider’s head exploded into poisonous blood, but Amy wasn’t out of the way.

Her object was more threatening than a sharp, spinning disc. It morphed into a large gun, with a dangerous barrel of bullets. It was a machine gun, and began firing rapidly all around the cave. Amy and Blade took shelter behind a rock whilst the bullets blasted all around, hitting many of the spirals and making them explode into the green magic dust.

A rock broke off the side of the cave and pummelled the floor, it was very large and blocked out most of the bullets. It gave Amy the idea she needed to beat the gun. She dived onto the gun and wrestled it down to the rock. She held it at the rock so that its bullets were all hitting it; Blade came to help her. They both shoved it against rock and its barrel got jammed with bullets. When it couldn’t take anymore, it crumbled into the magic dust.

The dust was everywhere from where the gun shot the spirals and blew them up. They gathered it all up when they noticed one last spiral that was about to attack them.

This one morphed into a new path. Blade and Amy were confused; it was as if the spiral was helping them with a new path. Blade ran into the path and was suddenly thrown back onto the floor. The spiral had created an illusion; Blade had just run into a piece of paper covering the cave wall. The paper flew down and began to suffocate Blade; it folded itself over his mouth many times making it impossible to rip. Blade’s face was burning with red as he pulled his cigarette lighter out from his pocket. He began to burn the paper even though it hurt him with the flames. It began to dissolve into the magic dust as it burned, and Blade managed to get up and breathe for air. Amy took a kick at the paper, and it ripped in half. No more spirals remained.

“NO,” growled the gunman who was still watching it from his house. “I knew they’d probably win but why did they have to take the magic dust?” He ran out of his house and headed towards the trapdoor, closely followed by the spiral he was watching the fight in.

He kicked the trapdoor open which sent Crush flying away in fear. Crush came to his senses and moved away, clearing a path for the man and the spiral.

“Find them,” He said in a dull and calm voice. Crush began sniffing their trail, and the spiral morphed into a ball and flew through the cave walls trying to find them. “I hear a voice, Crush, go back to sleep. You still need to recover.”

“What does this one want?” asked Blade rhetorically as he looked at the ball. The ball morphed back into a spiral and just hovered there, not even trying to attack. “I’ll punch it against the wall; then we’ll get some more of that dust.”

Blade pulled his fist back and then launched it powerfully towards the spiral. The spiral didn’t move; Blade thought it was just to slow. But he’d just made mistake; his fist shot through the spiral and pummelled against the cave wall. Blade put his fist in his mouth and started to suck off the blood that was covering his hand.

“Honestly, Blade, you’re not in a cartoon. Running into paper that looked a path but it just shielded the wall, punching the wall… Ha-ha, maybe you shouldn’t be so hasty.” Amy laughed, trying to make everything look better. Blade just stared at her with anger and pain in his eyes.

“This is neither, the time or the place for your stupid jokes.” He remarked. They both suddenly noticed that the spiral was gone, they were alone again.

“Ah, so that’s where they are,” The man smiled as looked at the spiral had recorded. He laughed “the best bit was when Blade punched the wall. Let’s get ‘em, Crush.”

He jumped onto Crush’s back and pinpointed the location in the cave where they had to go. Crush sped through the cave at huge speeds; the gunman had to grasp the beast’s mane to stop himself from being thrown off.

Blade and Amy turned around and looked in horror, the man and Crush were right in front of them. The only place to run was straight ahead.

“It’s no use, Crush can out-speed you easily,” the man was clear in his words, he was calm and it was as if he didn’t care. But he had his own way of doing things, and Blade and Amy wouldn’t like it. “I’m gonna show you another creature you may have to face in Claxia. I wouldn’t know if this one is worse or better than Crush, as it’s all up to you. Be ready to face a Flip Bat!”

Amy and Blade turned to each other; though a bat wasn’t much of a threat, it had to be if it was any where near as dangerous as Crush. They didn’t know where to run, or where the bat would come from, but what they did know was that the bat was blind. The Gunman handed over a map of the caves, which told them exactly how to get out of the caves; it was just a matter of time.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but do you have body-odour?” asked Amy, hoping the answer was no.

“No,” Blade replied “I wear a lot of deodorant.”

“I don’t think that deodorant will still be effective after what I did to you,” the man pulled Blade towards him and took a small sniff of Blade “whew, you do smell.”

The man clicked his fingers and down from the dark ceiling came a creature that looked no different to any normal bat. Same size, but not as much fur; its two small feet perched onto the gunman’s shoulder, and it waited for his command. The gunman grabbed Blade and yanked him by the shoulder to himself. He lifted Blade’s arm and trained the bat to his odour, the bat knew exactly where to attack.

“Take the map, and for the good of your life, run as far away as you can get.” He ordered, Blade and Amy ran off into the distance, with fear but at the same time, hope in their eyes. Once they were out of sight, the man knew exactly what to do; he wasn’t training the bat to sniff out Blade. That was a decoy. From his pocket, he pulled out some of the magic dust; he held to the bat’s nose and trained it to the dust properly this time. Using his own magic way of communication, he ordered it to attack Blade and Amy after it had gotten the dust.

The bat took off into the darkness of the cave, closely followed by the man and Crush, it was not long before the bat was flying too fast and got ahead of Crush. It was gaining on Blade and Amy by the second.

“Left, left!” cried Blade as they ran along, they were both injured, but they just couldn’t feel it, not one bit. From behind them came the flip bat, its eyes were burning with red evil, it was now right next to Amy. Its mouth opened and not teeth could be seen.

“What the…? It has no teeth, what’s it gonna do?” Amy ran on, still looking behind her as she went, narrowly avoiding rocks that could easily knock her flat. Just as it was a couple of metres away, it finally revealed why it was called a flip bat. Two long, thick fangs flipped out of its mouth. Both yellow and wet with fresh blood, it’s fangs were the length of its body, and its teeth could probably pierce directly through somebody’s head with no trouble at all, Amy dived onto the dusty floor and covered her head, she screamed alarming Blade. It was a race against time, the bat and Blade both charged towards her, but, obviously the bat was faster.

The bat’s fangs stuck into Amy’s pocket and ripped it apart, the dust fell onto the floor. Amy was going to pick it back up, but the bat looked threatening and she ran off again. It was only a few seconds before the man and Crush came speeding around the corner, the man got off and picked up the dust, whilst Crush waited behind.

“Blade,” Amy panted as she ran “I can’t run any further…”

Blade shook his head and grabbed her arm; he tugged her along and motivated her to keep running. A rush of air began flow all over their bodies, when they turned around the Flip Bat was there, jabbing its teeth at the air as it thought about their flesh. Blade let go of Amy and pulled a rock up from his pocket. In a powerful throw, the bat was pounded by the large rock and skidded onto the ground.

“We’ve just saved ourselves some time,” Blade smiled at Amy and Amy smiled back “the exit is just up ahead. We have about five-hundred metres left to run.”

Blade jolted against the wall in shock as the bat ripped open his pocket and pierced the bag of magic dust he had. Blade wasn’t expecting the bat to be back for at least half a minute more, but there it was. Distracted by shock and thoughts of the bat, Blade tripped over a small rock and was tossed into the air. He thudded onto the floor, but he wasn’t hurt. He thought this would be the end and the bat was going rip his flesh out, but it was to busy collecting the dust.

“There it is!” Amy cried as she light wafting into the caves, through an exit just ahead. Blade struck his elbow around as the bat caught him up and began sniffing for the juiciest part of his body, but his stomach was practically empty from lack of food. It began crunching many random areas on his body. Blade always clobbered the bat away every time it was about to use its fangs though.

He grasped the bat’s neck and slammed it against a wooden ladder. He threw it onto the ground and viciously kicked it until it couldn’t breathe. Shaking his head, he remembered his top priority, he had to escape. He scrambled up the ladder and met up with Amy.

His heart pounded, the fields were blazing in roaring fire and they were standing in a ring right in the middle of it, some of the grass stretched high up and had a giant flower at the top. But it was like a fly-catcher, it had a large, red mouth which struck fear into anybody who saw.

“Damn it! I can’t be –.” Amy tapped Blade’s shoulders and tried to calm him down before he shouted out a swear word and attracted the bat. Suddenly mud and dust shot up into the sky and scattered all over the fire. Wind rushed all over and pushed a path of burnt grass into view.

“It’s a trap.” Amy said firmly before Blade could move. The ground rattled and they heard a voice. The gunman and Crush pummelled the floor in front of them and the leapt off, blocking the path. Blade took his chances and began running into the fire. It didn’t hurt him at all. That could have been because the fire was ‘a twist in reality’ or because it was just plain magic.

“Don’t try it.” The man shouted, pointing at the giant fly-catcher plants. Blade went back into the fire-free ring, but he loathed walking towards that man, he felt that he’d remember the man every time he had a terrible nightmare, and no other time.

“I’m fed up now,” said Blade, with no fear in his voice at all. “Let us go.”

The man shook his head. He wasn’t like that.

“The reason you haven’t been feeling any pain in the last few hours is because I put a spell on you,” Amy’s eyes widened and she listened eagerly; but Blade was still trying to think of an escape plan. “Your bodies have been storing up all the pain you endured in the last couple of days, and when I click my fingers, all of the pain will strike you at once. There’ll be five seconds of unimaginable pain, and then you’ll consciousness. I’ll make sure you don’t die though.”

“Amy, get behind and run through the fire, quickly,” shouted Blade, who clearly wasn’t listening to the man. Amy hit her head in shame. “Don’t worry, the fire doesn’t hurt.”

“Fair enough,” said the man “but you won’t make it.” Amy’s heart pounded as he lifted his hands into the air. He clicked his fingers and a black flow of magic stabbed into Amy and Blade’s hearts. They screamed in pain, jolts of anger and pain were darting throughout tier bodies. Blade collapsed first, as he had suffered the most, but it wasn’t long before Amy toppled over and fainted as well.

The smiling man grabbed them by the legs and dragged them off back into the caves, but little did he know, two mysterious figures were watching and waiting for the right time to pounce.

 

[Jetx]

I don't care the slightest that you aren't reviewing, less critism is kinda cool.


Chapter 6: Bickering issues, but still good friends. (4.5 pages)

Amy opened her eyes and yawned slowly. She was in a dark room in the middle of a hospital ward. Electronic equipment was hooked into her body and was monitoring her. But it didn’t look like they were switched on. She rolled over to her left and saw Blade lying in a bed beside her. It was just both of them in a curtained off area.

“Psst,” whispered Amy, Blade opened his eyes and turned around to her. He suddenly felt pain his legs, but he ignored it for a while. “We’re in a hospital, and the police will be onto us in the morning.”

Blade yawned and couldn’t be bothered to reply. He looked at his legs and saw stitches that stretched nearly the whole way down his left leg. He cringed as he touched it, but he wasn’t exactly expecting to go to hospital without having any operations whatsoever. He groaned as look back at Amy and couldn’t help noticing the crutches that were resting on the edge of his bed. He loathed crutches, nearly every time he went to the hospital; he had to get back on crutches. He really detested them.

“Eek!” Amy cried as she saw shadowy figure hanging over her head. She pushed herself deep into her pillow and tried to keep her eyes shut.

“Is everything alright in there?” asked a nurse curiously. “It’s just one of those power-cut things, that’s all.”

“Everything’s fine.” croaked Blade. As soon as he heard the nurse step away from where they were, he turned around and looked at the dark human figure that was now waving its hands about and telling them to keep quiet.

“Please, remain quiet,” the figure whispered, it was clearly a girl from the way she talked. “I’m going to have to get you out of the hospital as soon as possible; the last thing we want is the police when we’re so close to getting to Claxia.”

Amy sprang up and sat there with total shock; whereas Blade just widened his eyes and pushed himself up a bit.

“How’re we going to get out?” questioned Amy, putting all her trust into the figure. “And how do you know so much about what’s been going on?”

“I don’t have time to answer those questions, Amy. Please help Blade get up onto his crutches, my neighbour is waiting outside and he’s very impatient…” she replied, opening a door that led onto the hospital balcony. Amy got up and pulled Blade towards the edge of his bed. Blade stretched and grasped his crutches firmly.

“How old is your neighbour?” asked Amy. The girl shook her head and gestured a ‘be quiet’ sign.

They all rested over the edge of the balcony, it was windy and cold. At least twenty four stories high. The girl, who was a bit more visible, now, grabbed a rope which had a hook at each end and threw it off the edge, a voice called up from one of the lower balconies.

“All clear, are they conscious yet?” it was a male voice, but Amy and Blade somehow predicted that the neighbour would be a boy.

“They’re with me now, hold the hook tight – and don’t you dare get over-excited,” She called down onto the lower balcony, trying to keep as quiet as possible. “OK, Amy, Blade, listen carefully. I only have the time to tell you this once before the staff get suspicious of our presence. On the railings of this balcony is a hook. On the lower balcony is another hook and there is a rope that links them. We need to slide down the rope and land on the balcony below. I’ll go with Blade, and remember, Amy, be quick about it, it’s not that dangerous.”

The girl snatched Blade’s crutches and left him leaning onto the railings, she gave one of the crutches and the other to Blade. Blade then put the crutch on the top of the rope, he grabbed each end and slid down to the balcony below, closely followed by the girl, who was simply hanging and pulling herself across the rope. As soon as they were down, Amy hesitantly did the same thing as Blade and slid all the way to the lower balcony.

“Won’t need this anymore,” the girl’s neighbour said, he grabbed the hook and threw it up onto the upper balcony. The two were still quite hard to make out, but Amy could tell they were two neighbours of the age of fourteen; she wouldn’t be surprised if they were in her class at school. She shook her head and began concentrating on what the girl’s neighbour was saying.

“Now we need hang on the edge of the balcony and drop onto the concrete. A slight mistake could seriously wreck your legs, so be very careful.”

He flipped over the railings and started hanging onto the balcony; he dropped onto the floor and picked himself up after a few seconds. The girl and Amy grabbed Blade’s arms and lowered him down towards the floor, until the girl’s neighbour finally was able to safely pull him to the floor. Amy was about to ask for herself to have the same way down, but before she could say anything, the girl had already dropped herself off the edge of the balcony and she was now the only one left.

“I don’t feel safe at all, I’ve scars all over my body and they’re killing me. Also, I’m no good at climbing.”

“Stop being such a wuss,” Blade shouted from the ground. “Just throw yourself off and we’ll grab you.”

Amy felt some confidence and began to climb over the freshly painted railings and hang on the floor of the balcony. A few seconds later she slipped off and began falling towards the concrete, she screamed loudly and got ready for a painful smack onto the floor, when suddenly she was grabbed by the girl and her neighbour and lowered onto the floor.

“Don’t you two know the meaning of quiet?!” the girl scowled “first Blade shouts the word ‘wuss’ really loud, and now Amy thinks she’s going to die and goes and screams really loud. Great, now we really have to get away quickly.”

Blade stumbled off the hospital wall he was leaning on and got onto his crutches. They all began to walk quickly towards the gates that led out of the hospital, but Blade wasn’t very fast on crutches, he came close to hurting himself many times as he tried to catch up. Amy moaned and began to pull him towards the others. Blade repeated the word ‘ow’ many times as he was dragged along.

“Ooh, girl and boyfriend are we? Ha-ha, I can see you love each other, it’s the way you act around each other.” The girl’s neighbour laughed. Amy let go of Blade’s arm and put her hands on her hips in joke-anger. Blade, however, collapsed onto the floor before he could get back onto his crutches. He landed quite powerfully in a press-up position and picked himself back up onto his crutches.

“And so, Will’s terrible jokes have started up again. Great.” The girl moaned sarcastically. Blade was trying desperately to catch up with up the others again, having Amy drag him was somehow easier even though it hurt. He also wanted to humiliate her by talking about the way he’d been left to drop onto the floor.

Amy turned around and began to drag Blade again; he tried to mention the event where he was left to pick himself up from the floor. But he was quickly feeling pain in his leg again. They finally got away from the hospital and dropped onto a bench.

“I haven’t yet calculated what we are to do next.” The girl pointed out, but none of the others really cared.

“And so, Susan’s nerdiness finally kicks in. Great.” Laughed the girl’s neighbour; the girl frowned as he did.

“We haven’t properly introduced ourselves yet,” the smiled and was excited about making friends with more people that were haunted by Claxia. “My name is Will, and her name is Susan, Susan the nerd. Na, I’m just kiddin’. We see each other so often that we treat each other like family, arguing all the time.”

“Would you mind stepping into the light, Will?” asked Amy as the street lamps began to turn back on from the weekly haunting. Will and Susan both walked into the light, and they looked different to what Amy and Blade thought they would. Will had blue, scruffy hair and was about the build of your average fourteen year old. He wore jeans and an orange and blue T-shirt. Susan had had black hair, with many strands of purple in random areas, her hair was shoulder length and her face was dull and depressed looking. She wore dark clothes a lot like Blade did. Neither of them went to Amy and Blade’s school.

“You’re pretty cool, my house is near here, wanna come?” Amy rushed her words in excitement. She loved knowing she wasn’t the only one who was haunted by the Fraidans of Claxia, always trying to get them all to help them. The other three nodded in agreement and began to follow Amy as they headed for her house. On the way, they discussed everything they knew about Claxia so far. Will and Susan explained that they had been watching them as they were bruised and battered in the fields of the gunman’s house. They were the two figures after all.

As Blade pushed himself along on his crutches, he couldn’t help smiling, things were about to start getting better and better. No more blood loss, no more pain. Amy’s feelings were quite the opposite; she feared Claxia and wanted to stay home in England for as long as possible. But she couldn’t the police were desperate to interview them, they’d never believe in a land of mystery and fantasy like Claxia.

Eventually, they’d finally got to Amy’s house, but there was a problem. The gunman had robbed Amy and Blade of everything they had that he’d find useful; including Amy’s keys.

“Amy, we’re gonna have to smash one of your precious windows.” Will sighed, he pushed Blade into the wall and got one of crutches, holding it like a golf stick, and he aimed for one of Amy’s windows.

“Stop! Listen to me,” Amy cried. The others all turned around and listened to Amy. “Look, I’m sure we’re all very tired, and all I want right now is just to sleep. In my back-garden is a tent, it’s rather damaged, but there are still sleeping bags inside that we can use. First we need to climb over the gate.” Amy shifted her eyes towards a fence, it was shady but you could tell it was thin wood and looked like it was rotting too.

“Err; judging by looks, that gate won’t be able to take our weight.” Susan remarked. Will sighed; he hated it when Susan did a remark with any technical words whatsoever, Amy, however, just wanted to get to sleep. There was a thunderous crack as Will kicked the gate, woods went flying into the garden, and now there was a big hole in the gate.

“What? I thought it was going to open…” complained Will as the others all sighed in disappointment. Well, the girls did, Blade was still trying to hold himself up; Will was still holding one of his crutches.

“Try the wall then!” shouted Amy, shoving her finger onto the brick wall as if Susan and Will were idiots. Will threw the crutch over the wall and began to push himself up. Once his feet had gripped a loose, he sprang himself up and dropped into the garden.

“It smells like grime here.” Shouted Will, not considering Amy’s feelings or the sleeping neighbours; Susan sighed and took the more clever approach to getting over, she grabbed an area of the gutter and pulled herself up to it, it was about the height of the wall but much easier to hold onto. She flung herself over and landed on two feet in front of Will, who was still covered in mud. Amy went the same way as Susan and got over without a scratch.

“I am so sorry; I was just so emotionally disturbed that I never cleaned the place in the last few months.” Amy sobbed as Susan rubbed some green, slimy gunk off the gutter on her trousers. They walked towards the battered tents and got into their sleeping bags which were stiff with dry sweat and patched with holes. Susan looked closely at dark stain and somehow knew it was blood.

“I’m sorry if this is a personal question, but when was the last time you saw your parents alive?” Susan was puzzled, but she didn’t expect Amy to want to reply.

“Three months,” Amy squeaked lowering her head and trying to hide the tears that were in her eyes. Susan sat Amy down on bench and comforted her. “Things haven’t been the same since. I lost my will to anything for myself, my house got dirty and now it stinks of dead people…”

Susan knew that saying it stank of dead people was just a metaphor. But she understood how Amy felt and comforted her right up until all three of them were ready to go to sleep.

“Wait a minute,” said Will, raising a finger. “We kind of left Blade out on the street…”

They all got up and aided Blade to get the garden, when he was ready, they finally got to sleep.

They all opened their eyes at the same time. They were in the middle of a dark forest, and it looked familiar somehow. Up on the horizon came a horrifying sight, it was that dragon again; back to give them all another beating.

“This isn’t a nightmare,” groaned Blade, turning to the others. His leg felt fine now but he didn’t care. “Whatever happens to us in this dream, well, we’ll wake up with half the pain we got.” They all suddenly turned to the dragon, which was headed towards them and gaining on them, fast.

 

[VoLTeR]

LOL no reviews....

Anyway nice job xD keep up the good work

 

[Jetx]

I had a heart attack when I saw your post. jk.

I actually checked this chapter for all its typos. o_o
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Chapter 7: The second attempt

The trees ahead were thrown up into the gloomy sky, and the moonlight seemed to be concentrating all of the dim light it had onto the approaching multicoloured dragon.

“STOP!” shouted Blade as the others all scattered away to hide. He grabbed Will but the others got away, the dragon was now sweeping its great wings up and down in unison and staring at its prey.

“Look, we all know you can talk.” Said Will, trying to hide his fear; the dragon pounded its large feet onto the ground and simply stared at them. Amy and Susan came out from hiding and also began to look at the dragon.

“Very well,” the dragon sighed in its manly voice. It rose up its head and focused his fiery red eyes on them all. “I am the most powerful foe you will face in Claxia… My name is Dargon and I am currently the ruler of all Claxia. In a sad incident, the last kings and queens were slain by the darkness of Fraiden hearts.”

“Fraiden hearts?” asked Will, he pondered whether his heart could count as being Fraiden or not.

“No, that’s not what I meant. By Fraiden hearts I am talking about how cold and evil Fraida is, they won’t hesitate to kill an ally; not for one second. They’re just nothing but evil. I can see that you aren’t like that, and I respect that. However, it is my duty to kill you and I will not let Beasta down. Not for weaklings like you!” he roared beginning to get aggressive. His large fist swung at Will and sent him hurtling back onto the stony path.

Will stood up and dived for cover but Dargon knew where he was hiding. He ripped the trees out from the ground grasped Will firmly in his hand. He took off into the dark sky and held Will by nothing but a finger.

“That all you got?” laughed the dragon as the others peered up and then hid in fear. He felt something squeezing onto his finger. As he looked down he saw Will biting onto his finger for grip; Will was the same size as the Dargon’s finger, which showed just how big Dargon was.

Blade suddenly realised that he was in the same condition he was a in a couple weeks ago; perfectly healthy and equipped with a powerful dagger. He leant over towards Susan who was hiding in a bush just a couple of metres away and began whisper hoping Dargon didn’t have some magic way of hearing.

“If this is how easy he really goes on us, by the time we actually have to face him in Claxia, with weapons magic and more invaders, this guy will be easy!” Susan nodded in agreement, when she suddenly heard a thunderous growl from above them.

“Oh, easy am I?” Dargon roared in anger and narrowed his burning eyes onto them both. “I thought I’d go easy on you and still beat you, but if you actually want me to try… Well… Here’s the deal, I’ll actually prove myself and give you such gruesome, quick deaths that won’t know it happened, in return for you waking up with no injuries at all?”

The others all came out of hiding, if they weren’t going to keep their injuries in real life; why did they need to worry about getting injured in a dream. Checking each other’s opinions wordlessly, they all nodded in agreement.

“Would you stop biting me?” moaned Dargon, dropping Will onto the stones on the floor. He suddenly noticed that his finger was wet, with pure water. He had an odd thought; Will had been draining his magic and getting new abilities!

Will was shocked to discover what his powers were. He just needed to wish for something and hold out and his hand and he would get it. Anything to do with water anyway; so glad to be able to use magic, he began blasting water at Dargon. To Dargon it was like a mere water pistol and he just ignored it.

“Who should I kill first? How about I make things more realistic and give Blade his broken leg back?” Blade dashed for the bushes but he wasn’t fast enough, Dargon grabbed him and flung him into the air at high speeds. Blade’s leg cracked against some jagged rocks and he cringed in pain. Dargon flew towards him ready to finish the job, but Susan wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Will, I need you to concentrate hard, and blast those jagged rocks with all the power you could possibly use. First, however, you have to concentrate the direction of the blast towards Dargon.” Susan nodded and Will began running towards Dargon’s tail, which was swinging in front of him as he ran. Will squirted water at Dargon and Dargon turned around to face him. Will leapt onto Dargon’s head and clambered over towards his tail. Dargon automatically flung him up into the sky, making him even closer to Blade.

He landed with a thud and it took him a while to pick himself back off the dirty mountain floor. He launched himself forward and panted rapidly as he speeded ahead of Dargon. Dargon, however, was unsure of whom to go for. He was completely unaware of what Will was planning to do, but Amy and Susan was the easier target. Dargon shot through the sky and blasted boiling mud out of his mouth towards Amy and Susan, who were now splitting up and diving into the nearby bushes.

Amy frowned and looked over at Susan who was on the other side of the pathway they were on. A fierce brown mudflow burst in front of them and tidal waves of heat went all over. It was quickly pouring down the pathway towards them and now their route to Will and Blade was blocked.

They didn’t want to blow their cover by running away, but they had no choice. They both dived into view and run as fast as they could to get away, but they weren’t fast enough. The trees behind them were thrown onto the floor as the mud rampaged down the path. Dargon grinned at the sight and turned back to Blade and Will. But they were out of view and weren’t causing any problems, so he decided to get Susan and Amy out of the way.

Amy carried on running away but Susan couldn’t take any more running, splitting up would be a good tactic, and if she could far enough to the edge, the mudflow would fly right past her. She ran into the darkness of the trees and hoped for the best. Dargon slowed himself down in the air and hovered above the fury of the mudflow. But he didn’t know who to go for.

The mudflow raged its way past Susan and she had a chance to start heading back up to Will and Blade. She lay low under the bristles of a thorny bush and waited patiently for Dargon to fly past her. Dargon had made his decision and had decided to kill Amy first; this was mostly because he didn’t even know where Susan was.

Blade was still lying in pain on the jagged rocks of the mountain edge, he thought he’d broken his back, but as Dargon said the only aim was to break one of Blade’s legs. That target had clearly been achieved. Will carefully climbed down onto the steep area of the mountain until he was on the right side of Blade. He was ready to blast Blade and the rocks right into Dargon and hopefully it would injure or even kill him. But he needed the all-clear from Susan, who was still about five-hundred metres away and running more and more out of breath by the second.

Amy couldn’t run much further, the mudflow had stopped but Dargon was still chasing her. He swooped down and stuck his hand right in front of Amy. She tried to stop but she tripped over his fingers and landed right into the palm of his hand. Before she could move she was squeezed into Dargon’s firm grasp and lifted into the air.

Dargon shot through the air and wind brushed all over his body, including into Amy’s face. She was unable to open her eyes without having every last drop of water blown into the back of her eye sockets. Eventually Dargon arrived near to the other three and glided high up into the blackened sky.

“I wouldn’t jump to any fast conclusions. You may not know yet, but without Amy being alive you can never beat me. For she is your leader and you will need her to maintain your willpower, determination and magic.”

Blade lay there on the jagged rocks and weakly shook his head. He spoke in a squeaky and weak voice.

“Oh and how can you be so sure of that?” he croaked, turning towards the massive dragon, hovering in the sky.

Dargon didn’t care about what Blade had to say. He was much more knowledgeable of Claxia and wasn’t the type to go lying to his opponents. He responded in a very sure voice.

“She is clearly your leader, you fool. I can tell by her personality and by her hair colour too. After all, how many girls do you see with natural red hair, never having dyed it in their lives? It’s the same with that magic-sucking idiot, Will. Natural blue hair…” Dargon was beginning to look furious as Blade still didn’t seem amused. He lowered down towards Blade until he was about twenty metres away and ten metres higher than the rocks. It was a difficult target, but Susan was now giving the all-clear, and it was time to strike.

The air became dry as all of the moisture was sucked into Will’s hands. Everybody felt weak and found it hard to breathe in the waterless air. There was a blinding blue light and a loud crashing sound as a large spiral of water blasted out from Will’s hands and shot the jagged rocks thundering towards Dargon.

Dargon flew backwards and began clobbering the rocks away with his right hand. Blade was flying through the air with only a matter of seconds left, but Dargon was too far away and he’d never make it.

Dargon pushed himself towards the rocks and began smacking them all away; but Blade was getting closer and closer. A sharp rock pounded into Dargon’s ribs and Dargon was distracted. Blade pounced onto Dargon’s back and stabbed his knife powerfully into Dargon’s back. Dargon dropped onto the floor and threw Amy out of his hand. Blade crawled into Dargon’s mouth and slammed his knife up into the top of his mouth. Blood rained down onto Dargon’s tongue causing him spit at the horrible taste.

He crushed Blade’s legs with his fingers and held him upside down. Blade’s eyes widened as he stared into Dargon’s furious eyes. Dargon remained still for a few long seconds, trying to decide which type of gruesome death to give to Blade.

“Get out of my sight,” he growled, he threw Blade up into the air and smacked him forcefully with his giant hands. Blade shot through the air and was too far away to be seen within just a few seconds.

“Why do I know what it’s like to die at such a young age?” Blade moaned as he shot through the air. The feeling of G-force in his heart was horrible, it was a like a theme park ride gone wrong. He flew off the edge of the mountain and plummeted into the rocks below.

Dargon shifted his eyes around the empty forest, looking for Susan, Will or Amy. He gritted his teeth angrily as more and more blood poured onto his tongue. He scowled and spat it all over the floor. Suddenly, he saw rustling in the trees up ahead, and it wasn’t caused by wind. He narrowed his eyes on the bush and came up with a clever plan.

Amy peered out from the bush, her heart pounded as she ended up looking into the eyes of Dargon. She cautiously pushed through the bush and came out onto the path. She prepared to run to the other side when her eyes started watering and the air went dry again. She turned around and saw a great wall of bright flames. She shielded her eyes and ran across the path towards another tree, when suddenly the tree burst into flames. Every tree she got just exploded into an unbearably hot fire.

She stumbled over onto the floor of the path and watched the forest around her erupt into flames. She held her eyes closed, weak in the heat of the flames. Her vision was just a massive blur and she couldn’t even feel anything anymore. She weakly twisted her head and saw a huge whirlwind of fire headed towards her. She was blocked off by two fiery walls and nowhere to run, not she could get up anyway.

A hand suddenly grabbed hers and dragged her towards one the fiery walls. Amy tried to make out who it was, but she couldn’t see no matter how hard she tried. She blinked blankly as she vaguely made out a gap appearing in the wall of fire. She was dragged through the gap and dropped in front of a tree. It was much cooler there, but her mouth was still dry and every time she swallowed it just seemed painful.

Dargon sat in the wall of fire, hoping his plan had worked. He began blowing water all over the fire and it just left a load of blackened remains of trees all over the place. But he couldn’t see an unconscious body anywhere, which was what he was hoping he was going to see. He roared powerfully and spat more blood onto the floor. He was beginning to get used to the taste of it.

The hand reached out and pulled Amy up into the tree. Amy yawned and kept her eyes closed; the heat had really gotten to her. She felt two thumbs rub her eye lids and she opened her eyes to see a blurry figure staring at her.

“Amy?” said the figure. Amy yawned again and tried to make out whose voice it was, but the sound of crackling was jammed into her brain and made it impossible to hear properly. The figure let go of her shoulders and rested her against the tree trunk. It climbed down and stared up at Dargon, it then returned to Amy.

Amy closed her eyes for a while and then opened them, her vision was a lot clearer now and she could clearly make out Will’s scruffy hair. After a few blinks, she could see quite clearly and could see nearly every detail of the branch she sat on.

“You can’t hide forever, and I’ll make sure you don’t,” snarled Dargon, quickly skimming the trees around him with his eyes. “A summoning spell should do the trick.” He added with an evil smirk wiped across his face.

First, he made sure all of the blood in his mouth had been spat out; he then flew into the sky, many metres above the trees. His wings were still and yet he still hovered up in the sky, his skin turned a leafy green and an aurora of green light swirled around his body. He jerked his huge paws up and they began to glow with a bright green powder. He opened his eyes and threw the glowing powder high into the night sky. It rained down onto the trees below and the Earth began to shake about.

The trees’ roots were slowly pulled out of the ground, one by one. The roots pounded onto the ground and the trees used them as legs. A long vine whipped Will in the face and he was thrown onto the floor. Before he could do anything, the vine was already binding Amy’s chest and pulling her into the air. As he got up, another tree began slowly walking towards him.

The tree’s branches wrapped around Will and threw him onto Amy, who was now suspended high in the air. The trees all began to climb on top of each other and formed a high green tower of leaves and rotten trunks. Amy and Will were hanging onto the vine right at the top of the tower. Dargon turned around to the huge tower of trees and flew right to the top of it.

“Amy, Will, how nice of you to join me again,” Dargon pretended to be polite, but it was only because he was so satisfied to see them. He grabbed them both in his hand and burnt the tower of trees to the floor. There was now a huge patch of emptiness in the middle of the forest. “You want to go to a place with trees? No problem.”

He tossed them both high into the air, so high that it would be nearly a minute before they hit the ground. Will tried to decide who to save, but Amy knew.

“Save yourself,” Amy nodded as they hurtled towards the forest floor. But Will couldn’t ignore the thought that she was the leader of the invaders. They were near the floor and Will made a quick decision and blasted a beam of water at Amy. She was pushed back and smacked onto a nearby tree; she groaned but had clearly survived.

Will smacked onto the ground, his neck clicked and he rolled a few metres, cracking many bones. His flesh ripped off and he lay dead on the ground. Amy turned away and scowled. Dargon flew down and pounced onto her back, there was a loud crunch and Amy fell to the floor. Susan was watching from a nearby bush and she leapt out to help. Dargon turned around to her with a wide grin on his face.

“You lose!” he laughed. Susan spun around and gasped as Dargon got ready to blast something nasty right onto her. She was also puzzled, why was Dargon so confident? “Isn’t it obvious that you’ve lost? Surely you realised that I was going easy on you so called ‘invaders’. You saw how quickly I took two people out. Two of you died in the space of five minutes and you’re about to be the third. That’s pretty pathetic; you have all got to get skilled at fighting.”

Susan suddenly remembered it was only a dream, getting hurt or killed was only half as painful in an illusionist’s world. She smiled happily and beckoned Dargon to kill her. He simply shrugged and took a deep breath. He then spat fire all over Susan, she fell to the floor so quickly she probably didn’t realise that she’d been hit.

Susan’s arms were hanging in the air. She wasn’t ready to stop shielding her face just in case the dream wasn’t really over. Amy and Will were just lying down, thinking about the dream.

“Well, you three all got killed quite quickly. What the heck happened?” asked Blade, looking at the other from his sleeping bag. Amy shrugged; she had no idea what had happened to her. Only Susan knew the whole thing.

“Well, Will fell off a tower of trees and chose to save Amy. Then Dargon crushed Amy with his feet, I went out to help and Dargon started ranting about how was going easy on them after all, and then he burnt me to a crisp.”

Blade blinked blankly at her. His brain was still trying to work out what she had just said, as she had rushed the words and it all sounded a blur. Blade finally figured what she was saying and then completely changed the subject.

“I’ve been lying here, waiting for you guys to end that dream for half an hour.” He moaned. Amy and Susan both rolled their eyes and lifted him up by the arms, they then rested him onto the sleeping bags so that he was sitting up.

“We need to do some careful planning,” Susan pointed out, shifting her eyes between Amy and Blade. She looked towards the corner of the garden and saw Will resting happily with eyes closed, in the shade of the nearby tree. “Will, get here now! We’ve got to sort ourselves out if we’re ever going to get anywhere. Our next target, member number five of the invaders; my guess, a boy, a boy very different to Will and Blade. Oh yeah, Will, you don’t have your powers any more so get the hell over here.”

 

[Jetx]

Here's the next chapter:

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Chapter 8: Raiding your own home (8 pages) (I didn't know it was that long O_O)

Whilst Amy and Susan busied themselves with a conversation, Blade decided he’d take a look around Amy’s garden. He carefully stood up and quietly backed away from them. Luckily they were both amused with catching up with what they’d heard about Claxia.

“Want me to get your crutches?” grinned Will as he stood up, blowing Blade’s cover on purpose; Blade frowned and then nodded, as Will walked past, Blade whispered in his ear.

“I’ll get you,” he narrowed his eyes and tried to look threatening, but Will simply smirked and chuckled.

“What was that?” laughed Will, spinning around to Blade on one foot; he began to shout his words loudly so that Amy and Susan were forced to listen. “Did you just say-,” before he could finish, Blade suddenly back-handed him in the stomach. In shock, Will’s legs flew up into the air and he splashed into a nearby puddle of muddy water. At first he clutched his stomach and groaned, he then looked at the sticky mud that stained his blue jacket. But a few seconds later, he and Blade both began to roar with laughter.

“Boys, this is extremely important, could you shut up and listen?” Amy growled, gritting her teeth. Will clambered over and began to listen, but Blade had suddenly remembered his leg injury. He peered down and realised how much weight he was putting onto his injured leg. He looked towards the others and his eyes twitched as they filled with tears, it was so painful that he was even forgetting to lift to his injured leg off the floor. His face grew more and more red each second, and just his breath was beginning to run dry, he got ready to yell in pain. Susan slammed his hands onto his onto the rubber grips of his crutches and his automatic reaction was to lift his injured leg into the air. All of his weight piled onto his left leg and his bright red face slowly returned to normal. He let out a sigh of relief and slumped onto the grass beside the others.

“Thanks,” panted Blade.

“No problem,” smiled Susan. She was glad that somebody had finally said something nice to her. She stared at Will and tried to make him feel guilty for never thanking her in the past, but Will just raised an eyebrow as if he didn’t know why she was staring at him, but he clearly did. Will turned around to Blade and began to laugh under the sound of a fake cough.

“That looked funny.” He laughed, jokingly. Blade back-handed him again, but this time in the chest and he slammed onto the floor.

“That looked funnier,” grinned Blade as he looked at Will’s shocked expression. He burst out laughing satisfied with revenge. Amy and, Susan in particular, burst out laughing too. Will narrowed his eyes on Blade.

“I’ll get you,” he growled, doing an impression of Blade. It took a while for them to calm down, but when they finally had, they knew Susan had something important to say.

“Okay, we now know that elements and magic exists for sure in Claxia. So, I believe that we’re missing one main element, two in fact; the element of nature and the element of fire. There is a chance that only one of them will join us. Before we go anywhere, we need to check the notes that the Fraidens have dropped off.” Susan looked she had more to say, but she knew she’d given them enough to think about. The others nodded in agreement.

Will got up and started wandering towards the corner of the garden he was relaxing before. In the corner of Blade’s eye, he saw something suspicious where Will was about to sit. He pushed himself up using his left leg and leant onto his crutches, he then rushed over to where Will was.

“Will, you can break in now.” Said Blade, handing Will one of his crutches; Will smiled evilly and walked off towards Amy’s house. Blade reached down towards the object jammed in the soil and carefully pulled it out. It was a dirty picture frame, the wooden border was stained with black, crispy mud and it crumbled when Blade rubbed his fingers against it. Where the photo should be, there was a blackened piece of ripped paper. There was writing on it, which was in scruffy handwriting and hard to make out under the dirt that coated it. From what Blade could make out, it said something like: Never look at photo behind this. It looked like it had been written a very long time ago, the grammar was terrible and Amy was intelligent. Thinking it was outdated, Blade’s curiosity came over him and he pulled away the old sheet of paper.

Suddenly, something hit him hard in the head. The back of his head erupted with sharp pain and his reaction was to squeeze with his hand. Suddenly something hit his head again, but this time it was much more painful and even felt it was scratching him. He let go of the picture frame and fell to the floor, along with many pieces of rotten wood that were once part of it. He groaned and clutched the back of his head, and then he turned around to see what was hitting him.

Amy was standing there, her face red with fury. She gritted her teeth and growled angrily. Blade scratched the back of his head innocently, even though it stung as he did it, but he was rudely interrupted.

“Can’t you read? You stupid, stupid idiot! You’ve betrayed my trust Blade; it doesn’t take much to ask for a friend’s permission before you go nosing through their personal stuff!” Amy roared with anger, but Blade was honest and wasn’t going to deny anything. Will and Susan swung around and stared at them both with their eyes wide open. Blade was about to apologise but Amy pushed him over onto the soil. Blade felt pain in his injured leg as he fell, but he tried to ignore it.

“Go ahead, take the dammed photo, but don’t let me see it.” She whimpered. She spat on the floor as if Blade were her dirty slave. Blade frowned, but maybe she had could reason to, if what was on the photo was really that important. After Amy had walked away, Blade took a quick look at the photo. He was shocked, as were Susan and Will who were looking at it with him.

There stood a boy. The photo looked rather new, too. The boy had smart blond hair and a blue head-band tied around his forehead. He looked about the age of eight or nine and had a jolly grin. He wore blue clothes and looked quite skinny. But there was one thing they all knew; Amy had a brother.

Amy was in a bad mood, there was something Amy was upset about, and she wanted to keep it hidden. Maybe she’d lost contact with her brother, maybe her brother had died, but it wasn’t a good time to ask. Blade got up and asked Will to give him his crutch back, but Will hadn’t got permission to smash Amy’s window yet and didn’t want her to get upset again.

“Come on, we all need to get inside, have a nice warm relaxing day, and get a good sleep at the end of it.” Amy breathed heavily as she spoke, still trying to calm down. She apologised to Blade, but Blade felt guilty and apologised to her. Susan rubbed Amy’s shoulders and smiled comfortably at her.

“Listen, if you ever feel upset about it, anything, I’ll help you.” Susan tried to comfort her. But Amy gave a reassuring smile suggesting that was OK.

“He’s hated me ever since he found out Mum and Dad were dead. I refused to visit him; I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. He knew it was my fault. The note told me to climb the mountain, to climb up to were you and Will live. I thought it was prank and didn’t bother. I never saw my parents again. Max, my brother, I haven’t seen him in two months; my parents were low on money and they couldn’t handle him. He lives in a care home and no idea they were dead until I told him. It was the look in my eyes, he knew I was responsible.” Amy broke down and her face flooded with tears. She cried as images of her Max’s upset face flashed in her brain. The others quickly crowded round her to comfort her.

“It’s not your fault, it really isn’t.” Susan whimpered, she felt sorry for Amy. The emotions she must have gone through would have unimaginable; nobody could begin to describe how hard it was. Amy shook her head.

“Will, smash the back door. It’s made of glass. We all need to get in and calm down.” Will stopped calming her and got up. With one of Blade’s crutches being held in his hand like a baseball bat, he walked up to the back door with an evil smirk wiped across his face. His face creased up and he swung the crutch towards the glass back door.

There was a loud crashing sound and small pieces of glass, like tiny crystals, scattered all over the dirty living room floor. Will cautiously stepped through, tip-toeing on his white trainers and trying to refrain from stepping on any glass. Amy walked in normally, nothing was really going to happen, Will was just overcautious. Susan did the same and Blade just used his crutches to take the blow of the shattered glass.

Her house was a disaster zone. The carpet had many patches of drink stains, black, purple and brown. There were dry coffee stains down the walls and the ceiling had them too. The table had many fine cracks running down in where it looked like something had been smashed against it. The smell of decaying wood hung heavy in the air, thick spider webs were all over the walls. Dust lay all over the place, on the computer, the shelves and the radiators; all over. It was very hard to imagine that two months without parents to look after you could really do this much damage. Things that even looked like green mould hung on the upper corners of the shady room.

“Sorry about the mess, I used to get so angry that I’d fill a cup with water, milk, anything; and I’d just splash it all over my house…” Amy sighed. Though it was quite a strange thing to do, it was better than what Blade would do. He’d probably either self-harm or vandalise…

“Do you have internet connection?” asked Will, excitedly turning her dust covered computer. Amy shook her head and Will frowned. He held the switch and the computer quickly shut itself off.

“Will, we have much more important things to do than play cheap internet games,” Susan whined. Will frowned again; he hated being told what do to. Especially from his next-door neighbour who was only a few months older than him. “You’re going to learn to live without Earth’s internet. Surely you realise that it’s unlikely that all four of us are going to live?” Will’s eyes widened. The other’s felt the same, they were in denial. The thought of one of them dieing wasn’t right. But Susan nodded, with threats like Crush being an every day occurrence; it couldn’t be hugely likely for them all to make it through.

“Okay, let’s just go upstairs and see what notes Fraida have left for us. I’m sick of wearing this hospital gown too and I’ve got to get changed. I’ve been unconscious for four days and Fraida must’ve contacted us by now.”

They all walked upstairs into Amy’s room; the floorboards creaked many times as they walked. Amy’s room was as ruined as the rest of house, if not, more ruined. It had cobwebs stretched across the pale brown walls, drink stains scattered all over the dirty, blue floor and the wood on her bunk bed was weathered. The cracked window swung freely on its rusty hinges as the breeze rushed in; causing the hinges to squeak with a horrid high pitched sound. The early morning sunshine illuminated yet more horrors in Amy’s room. There were dead brown spiders; lying on their backs with their crippled legs bent over their wrinkly abdomens. Mosquitoes were squashed against the walls, with legs torn from their bodies. The squashed flies had a disgustingly shiny silver blood pool around their bodies. Will shuddered as he thought about what the fly-swatter used to kill them would look like. He stepped back and crushed one of the dead spiders beneath his foot. The spider was long dead and all of its blood had already dried up, it made a small crunching noise as it was crushed; sending a couple of tiny money spiders, who were hiding under the body for shelter, scurrying underneath Amy’s bed.

“Not the type of girl that’s arachnophobia, are you?” shuddered Will as he heard the spider’s body crunch.

“I can’t really keep the spiders out with that broken window letting them all in… I try to keep the bugs out of my bed, but if too many of them get on; I just sleep on the sofa,” she looked Will, who innocently smiled and stepped out of her room. “If you’re scared of a couple of dead bugs, you’ll faint so many times in Claxia. I heard that huge beasts like Crush are an everyday occurrence there!” said Amy realising how scared Will was. He shuddered again and stepped further out of the room. Amy and Blade laughed a bit, but Susan tapped them both on the shoulder and shook her head. She knew him very well, and perhaps he had nightmares easily.

“Hey, how about we clean this place up?” grinned Susan. It wasn’t long before Blade and Will were already running downstairs. Susan grinned again as they fell into her trap. She shouted “Okay then, how about we just look at this note and then we can throw it away!”

Will quickly dashed up the stairs to see the note, leaving Blade to hop up the stairs slowly. When they were both up, they all looked at the note together.

You must travel to France for the next stage of your quest. You are doing well.

“What the hell? What’s France going to do?” said Will, re-reading it. The others shrugged.

“I don’t know, but I have plan,” said Susan, devilishly. The others knew from the expression on her face that it was good one. “If we tear up the letter, perhaps the Fraidens will come here to fix it.” They all agreed it was worth a shot. The paper ripped in half like any ordinary paper, nothing special.

Amy later got changed into her ordinary clothes, a pale pink t-shirt and a dark pink pair of trousers. She hung the hospital gown up on a peg just in case she ever needed it again. Blade, however, had nothing to change into and was still wearing his gown.

He decided to wear some of Max’s old clothes. They were much too small, a fourteen year old strongly built boy, couldn’t exactly wear the clothes of a skinny eight year old. Though Max was eight when he lived with Amy; he was now nine and living in a care home…

They spent the rest of the day watching television, playing computer games, and Amy and Susan cleaned up Amy’s room a bit. But then they saw something rather shocking on the local news. The newsreader was a tall black woman, with dark, curly hair which twirled down to her shoulders. Her brown eyes looked into the camera as if she was talking to the four of them. They all sat down on Amy’s green sofa together and watched it with their hearts pounding.

“Earlier this week, two youths ran away from their school and were found two days later, unconscious outside a man’s house. Ben, fourteen, has only recently moved to our small community, and had suffered torture as well as a very serious leg injury. It is believed he is somewhat responsible for taking Amy, also fourteen, and hurting her. However, they were both seen escaping out of hospital together, early yesterday morning, with two more youths. Their location is currently unknown, Amy’s parents’ locations are unknown, and Ben’s parents have not seen him for two weeks. The man whose house they were found outside of is not guilty.” Pictures of Amy and Blade suddenly appeared on the screen.

“Damn, they think I hurt you and then hurt myself to cover up the evidence. And that gunman’s been playing mind games, how could they call him innocent? We’ve got to do something. Tomorrow, we move out to France.” Blade snarled. His heart pounded as the local news was seemingly dumping the blame on him. It was as if the human race were now an alien species who wanted to hunt down each of the invaders.

The setting sun made the sky a beautiful orange sheet of light, with red clouds scattered all around it. But the invaders had no time to stare, they had to prepare. While Blade saw on the sofa watching television and resting his leg, the rest of the group dragged the sleeping bags from the garden to Amy’s room. They all came down and they watched television for the next couple of hours.

“Well, I’m pretty bored now,” sighed Amy “Come on, I suppose I could get used to being leader, and I, umm… Command… You to get ready for bed; I think I did that okay.” Susan laughed at how she said that so badly, but Blade just frowned disapprovingly.

“Leader? You sound more like a rookie mum…” he muttered.

“C’mon, Blade, you’ve done pretty well do make it a whole day without an injury, let’s end the day on a good note.” Will smiled, but Blade just shook his head.

“Nope, I didn’t, I got slapped by Amy.” He murmured grumpily.

“Damn right, and you deserved it, you nosey brat.” She growled.

“Last time you called me that, we’d only just met. Who cares about whether I got hurt, anyway? I’m pretty immune to pain after self-harming for a long few years.” he snarled, getting even more furious.

Amy stomped her foot on the ground and punched the sofa in anger, she tried to calm down but Blade just shrugged and raised his eyebrows. Will, feeling quite uneasy, looked at how both of them were so angry; he sat beside Amy, who was evidently the most frustrated, and put his arm around her shoulder. Amy’s elbow suddenly jabbed at his ribs, sending him running as far as he could get from Amy. Blade shook his head, purposely trying to annoy her.

“OH, look at you! You’re so darn hard, aren’t you? You and your friends, all so big and tough, slashing yourselves with your knives.”

Blade suddenly lifted his head, revealing the tears that were beginning to fill his eyes. “My friends; or at least I thought they were friends, forced me to do it. They were druggies, a terrible influence, that’s why I moved away, not because the notes told me to,” he cried “That’s why I am what I am, happy now? It’s like they cursed me. I’ve just become used to wearing dark and grim clothes, carrying a knife around, being too brave for my own good, and every other problem you have with me…”

“I understand,” Amy sighed, suddenly feeling very empathetic “But I just want you to understand how unbelievably lucky you are. Maybe you should listen to me, please. First you punch through a window and run after me, climbing over a sharp gate. Then, you chase me up steep mountain, get burned to death by a Dargon, come back with half your injuries, fall on the floor ad get your burns infected, climb over an electric fence, get paint-like rain in your eyes, get beaten up by a gunman, get skinned alive!”

“Well, I was exaggerating about being skinned alive a bit. All he really did was slice a bit of skin off my arms at a slow and painful rate…”

“I’m sorry, Blade. I’m just worried for you.” Sighed Amy, hugging Blade sadly.

“It’s okay Amy, you’re a great leader. It’s my fault over yours, come, let us sleep.” He hopped upstairs and carefully got into his bed. Amy sat down on the sofa, overpowered by guilt. Blade was a victim of peer pressure; he felt that if he didn’t abuse himself, he wouldn’t be ‘cool’. His friends would beat him up, and other nasty stuff like that would probably happen.

“Amy, don’t feel bad. It’s all over now; you were just stressed about that news report.” Susan had a warm smile which made Amy feel a bit better. Will charged up the stairs to go to the toilet. But it was long ten minutes before Susan could cheer Amy up.

Susan got onto the bottom bunk and Amy got onto the top. Will slept in the middle of Amy’s room and Blade slept next to him on the left side of the room, where the spiders were before Susan and Amy cleaned up.

* * *

“Tadpole,” Blade opened his eyes, the room was dark and Amy’s digital clock flashed ‘1:37 AM’. He shook his head and tried to back to sleep “tadpole,” the voice said again. It was a quick snap and Blade could hardly hear who it was. But this time he knew he wasn’t dreaming. “Tadpole,” it murmured again. Blade’s heart pounded, he was alone in a dark room, hearing a strange voice that he didn’t recognise. He wasn’t ready to go face-to-face with a Fraiden, not yet. To make sure he wasn’t dreaming, he reached out and squeezed Will’s leg. He was there alright.

“Tadpole…” This time Blade knew where it was coming from. He heard Will say it.

“I know it’s you, Will. Shut up already.” He moaned grumpily.

“Ssh,” whispered Will. Blade grumbled; Will was the one who needed to be quiet. “Tadpole.” Will added.

“Fine then, I’ll be a vampire if it makes you shut up,” mumbled Blade. “Vampire…” added Blade, doing an impression of Will. “I vant-a your blood-a!” he laughed.

“Shut up Blade. Will can’t help it if he sleep-talks.” Susan woke up. The bunk bed rumbled as Amy got up too.

There was a crash; the window burst open sending a freezing gust of wind across everybody’s faces. Will jerked up and worriedly grasped Blade’s arm. Blade pushed himself up and grasped Will’s arm in fear as he heard something climbing down from the window into Amy’s room. Amy slammed against her bed, pretending to be asleep. Susan shuddered, and tried to pluck up the courage to switch on the light.

“Fraiden invaders, sleep, you must sleep!” croaked a voice from the window, it was a crackly voice with no real pitch in it. It was like a croaky whisper. The room suddenly lit up as Susan turned on the light.

There stood something peculiar. A small creature stood next to the open window; it wore a robe which covered all of its body apart from its hands, face, and shoes. The hood of the dirty grey robe covered his entire face apart from his mouth and chin. The visible area of his face was grey and scrunched up. He had pale, wrinkly lips which were creased into a frown. He had a huge hunchback that made his head lower than the top of his back. His skinny grey arms held a staff firmly in the grasp of his wrinkly hands. It looked like a very old wizard.

“You fools!” roared the old wizard, aiming his staff for Susan. Amy dived out of bed and felt more confident to talk to him; he was only the height of her waist.

“As the future slayer of your worst, enemy, Dargon, I command that you don’t attack!” she shouted loudly, waking up some of the neighbours.

“Lady Amy, the tradition that has been carried out for millions of years must not be broken. Groups of invaders like you have seen me before; but just not my face. You cannot see my face.” Muttered the wizard. Will had a bad thought; that wizard could be the one responsible for the deaths of Amy’s, his and Susan’s parents.

“Why shouldn’t we?” screamed Will, he leapt forwards and landed on top of the wizard. The wizard collapsed onto the floor and groaned in pain, he grabbed the wizard’s cloak and lifted it over his face.

“NO! You must not look me in the eyes, if the tradition is broken, you must all die!” but it was too late, Will had already pulled of his hood.

 

[Jetx]

I completed it a while ago but never read it through. But now I have. BTW, how Will feels when he gets ready to go on the cork-drive is slightly exaggerated to the way I felt before going on a ride at a place called Thorpe Park. So I knew exactly how to describe it. Here it is, enjoy!

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Chapter 9: Theme Park thugs. (6 and a half pages)

Will squeezed his eyes shut and quickly put the hood back over the wizard’s face. He opened his eyes and sighed in relief, but the wizard wasn’t satisfied. A yellow beam of light blasted out of the round piece of rotting wood on the top of his staff.

The beam smashed onto Will’s face and sent him hurtling towards the back of the room. His head smacked against the brown wall and he dropped on top of Blade. Blade grabbed Will by the shoulders and lifted him up to see if he was okay. But he wasn’t. His rolled up and his mouth was a pool of blood. Blade rested Will’s head on his shoulder but it wasn’t long before his neck was wet with blood from Will’s mouth. He put him down and tried to stand up, but he couldn’t.

“You’re going to regret this, you stupid old hag.” Grumbled Blade.

“Well, he’s learnt his lesson now, hasn’t he?” Muttered the wizard; slowly getting up with the aid of his crooked knee. “How about I pay you back, you can ask me a bunch of questions about Claxia, and I will answer them. However, I will have to limit you because if I tell you too much the tradition will be broken.”

“Did you murder our parents?” asked Will straight away with no hesitation.

“No. I am just the messenger. But your parents being dead is for the best, otherwise you wouldn’t want to leave Earth.” Replied the wizard trying to look reassuring, but his smile could never be friendly. He was just too evil-looking.

“Are we going to get lasers and super guns?” asked Blade excitedly.

“No. But you will get axes, swords, bows, arrows, spears…”

“What?” fumed Blade. “I would have thought you’d more advanced than us, you’re living in the medieval times. What’s up with that?”

“Guns and electricity are frowned upon. They destroy the tradition and are generally an unfair way of fighting. The only one who ever brings a gun into Claxia is Jack. That scum who guards the gateway to Claxia, the one that captured you and Amy.”

“Why do we need to go to France?” sighed Amy. Nobody wanted to have to sneak onto a ferry, it would be too difficult.

“Because that’s where two very important events are going to happen.” Replied the wizard as if he was hiding something.

“What is this Reality’s Twist thing all about? The note we got two weeks ago.” Asked Susan in a puzzled way.

“Your planet is stupid. You have weird places like ‘space’ and ‘the Universe’. Those places don’t exist in Claxia, the sun is a giant orb hanging in the sky and the stars are just a magic dust from the gods. What you call science would make no sense in Claxia”

“But what is this Fraida and Beasta stuff all about?” asked Will.

“Will, if you had just asked me even I could answer that.” Whinged Susan “Fraida and Beasta are two massive tribes that are always trying to steal the throne of Claxia from each other.”

Will gave Susan the evils but Susan just raised her eyebrows. He looked over and the wizard and the wizard nodded to what Susan had said.

“You are only meant to ask one question each,” Moaned the wizard. “Have fun in France.”

“Wait!” cried Susan, but she was suddenly fully dressed with perfect clothes. It was the middle of day she was standing in the middle of what looked like a theme park. Patches of short grass lay all over the place, highlighted by the powerful noon sun. Other places just had bone-dry soil and rocks where the amount of people walking on it had worn it down. A few trees made the scenery more natural, but there was the unmistakable sound of children laughing happily as they went on the rides, huge Ferris Wheels and a twisted rollercoaster. The beautiful smell of freshly cooked hot dogs wafted through the air causing the four of them to get very hungry. The light breeze brushed across their necks soothingly and made them feel very relaxed. The sky was a sea of bright blue with very few scraps of cloud floating past gently. Everything about the place was beautiful.

Susan looked over towards the hotdog stand; she suddenly noticed the bold French writing patched across the top of it, and the smaller English writing underneath. It was now clear. The wizard had teleported them to France.

“Whoa,” cried Blade, hopping up and down on his right leg excitedly. “My leg’s better, and I’ve got my clothes back.”

“Hold on a minute,” said Amy with smile wiped across her face. “I think we’ve got every thing back, my mobile, and your knife.”

She reached into her pink trouser pocket and pulled out a small phone. But her smile suddenly disappeared when she looked closely at it.

“This isn’t my phone,” she mumbled, looking at the large pixels that covered the screen which made the phone seem like such an old model. “My phone’s a flip phone. Not some crummy outdated thing.”

“And what the hell is this?” whined Blade as he pulled a kitchen knife out of his pocket. “My old knife was a proper dagger, with a skull on it and every thing. This to me is nothing but a sharp piece of metal on a tasteless brown handle.”

“But it’s the thought that counts,” pointed out Susan. Blade sighed and nodded, but before anybody else could say anything. Will pulled out a few coins and charged towards the hotdog stand, closely followed by Blade, excitedly running on his fully recovered legs.

“English?” asked a tall black man in a strong French accent.

“Oui,” Grinned Will.

The black man shuffled on his Chef’s hat nervously as if he was new to the job, he picked up a fresh, brown hotdog wrapped in a spongy roll. He then picked up a bottle of tomato ketchup and flicked the lid open.

“Ketchup?” asked the man, smiling nervously. It then became a bit clearer that he was just unsure of how to speak proper English. Will and Blade nodded and the man squeezed on a lump of ketchup, which ran down like a squirming worm across the hotdog’s surface. Will licked his lips as the man handed him his hotdog. As Blade was receiving his, the man said something that Will hadn’t considered. “This will cost five euros.” He said, leaning on the counter and trying to look friendly.

“Uh-oh,” said Will worriedly. “I’ve only got pounds.” Added Will; pulling his pockets inside out and holding a few pounds in his hand.

“It is fine. You can buy with pounds.” Smiled the man, happily. Will nodded and handed over the money.

“Merci,” Thanked Will, testing out his very basic knowledge of French. Blade and Will turned around and sank their teeth into the juicy meat. Will turned around as he was tapped on the shoulder; Susan held her hand and raised her eyebrows. Will sighed and handed over the last bits of money he had left to Susan, who then ran off to the stand with Amy.

“Two hotdogs, one with ketchup, one with no ketchup, please?” asked Susan in Basic English that the man could understand. He handed the hotdogs to Amy and Susan gave him the money.

“There, much quicker,” laughed Susan, taking the hotdog with ketchup out of Amy’s hand. They tried to make it last for a while as they sat down on a low brick wall, as it was the first thing they’d had to eat in while and they probably wouldn’t have any other food for a while either.

“Hey, I love the teacups, let’s go on them,” Grinned Amy; dragging Susan away from the group. “Is that okay?”

“Well,” paused Blade. “Alright, we’ll be on the cork-drive so come there when you’re done.”

“Cork-drive? That doesn’t sound good.” Moaned Will as Susan and Amy walked away. Blade shrugged and started running towards a huge ride. Will chased after him but was much too slow, when Blade finally stopped running; Will pressed his hands onto his knees and panted. He lifted his head groaned as he looked at the ‘Cork-drive’. It was a huge mechanism with a long blue track. Will stared in horror as a carriage filled with screaming people shot past him. It shot under the ground and then leapt up onto the surface many times before shooting up an almost vertical piece of track. It sped round three loop-the-loops until it finally slowed down about seventy-five feet up in the air. It rattled along the track slowly, giving all of the riders a chance to catch their breath. But then it got worse. The carriage shot down powerfully towards the ground, spinning in a very fast corkscrew until it slowed down at the bottom and slowly rolled to a stop. The riders barely had a chance to scream; the ride was so fast. Will shivered in fear as he watched the riders stumble out of the carriage dizzily and show a thumbs-up sign.

“Woohoo, the queue’s short. We’ll be on the ride before we know it,” cheered Blade, suddenly realizing the expression of sheer horror that was wiped across Will’s face. “I know all the names of these rides, because I’ve heard loads about it on the television. Don’t be scared, Will. If Claxia is really that little technologically advanced, this could be the last chance you ever get to go to a theme park.”

Will breathed heavily and nodded, beginning to feel a bit better. His heart pounded against the side of his chest, as he got ready to face his fears. A short woman with blonde shoulder-length hair grasped onto Will’s hand and pulled him up onto the stand. She rested him onto one of the carriage seats and lowered a plastic protector onto his body and then she locked it tightly. Will knew there was no escape now, he felt sick and his heart was beating uncontrollably. He just wanted to get off, but he knew he had to do it. Blade sat down beside him and was locked into his position. Will couldn’t stop staring at his face, it made him feel safer.

“I don’t want to do it,” whimpered Will as tears flooded his eyes. He listened worriedly to the ride’s background music that made it sound a lot more threatening and scary.

“You want to get off?” asked the blonde haired woman in her strong French accent. Will nodded and lowered his head, allowing tears to flood out and pour down his face.

“Will, don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it seems. Just look at me if you get scared. I’ll be here the whole time, and I’ll keep you comforted. Please, Will, don’t let me down. I’ll find a way to repay you.”

Will sighed, but he plucked up a bit more courage and said he wanted to go on it. His seat rattled as the powerful motors started up and the carriage began to push itself forwards.

“Too late to go back now.” Breathed Will to himself. He shut his eyes and hoped for the best.

“Here we go, you’ll be fine, Will.” Smiled Blade.

Will’s eyes opened as air rushed up his nostrils, he felt like somebody was stretching his heart as the carriage blasted itself into an underground tunnel and flew back up into the air, before depositing itself back onto the ground. It then shot underground and flew back up again many times. Blade screamed excitedly as thrill pounded his heart. Will found it thrilling too, but he was too scared to open his mouth. The seat rumbled as the motor struggled its way onto full-force.

They both felt many times their own body-weights as they were lifted onto the almost vertical part of the track. Their backs pressed onto the seats with the huge force of gravity. The ride sped up, making them feel so heavy that they were being crushed by themselves. The ride went very fast and then quickly shot upside down and back around again, sending the blood that was filling in their heads back down into their bodies.

“Here we go again!” cheered Blade as the ride pushed up towards the second loop. He looked over at Will, who was blinking rapidly as he got ready to fly around again. Will smiled at him, beginning to feel more relaxed and actually enjoying the ride.

They shot around the second loop, sending the blood pressure away again. Will suddenly put on a beaming smile.

“Woohoo!” he screamed. Blade chuckled to himself, another job well done. Persuasion was a thing Blade was good at, and he was usually right. He told himself to congratulate Will when the ride landed. They shot up and around the third spiral, and Will smiled even more.

“You alright? The worst bit’s coming up.” Asked Blade. They finally found themselves being pushed upwards onto the high up straight piece of track. Will nodded quickly, but he knew he was lying. Will was about to face a big problem, one of his biggest fears, heights.

The seat shunted back and forwards as the carriage rattled up onto the straight. Will’s faced creased into a scared frown as he looked down at the ground. Small people were dotted about; they looked so tiny that the only thing you could notice about them was their hair colour. The track they’d just been on a minute before was now just a blue line, which went underground sometimes. His heart ripped itself back and forwards, as he stared off the side of the track and couldn’t help but notice he was just on a seat, on a thin piece of track, rattling about seventy-five feet in the air with no safety barrier. It was as if they were just flying through the air. To make things worse, his mind was playing tricks on him and made him think the plastic protection on his chest was loose and going to fly up and leave nothing between him and the thin air. His hands squeezed tightly onto the metal grips, which were on the chest protection as he stared in horror at the vertical corkscrew drop, which was few seconds away from him.

“It’s totally safe, Will, you’ll be okay.” Said Blade as the drop drew closer and closer.

“Shut up.” Cried Will, trying to gear himself up for the drop. He counted from three to zero as the carriage leant down onto the drop. He squeezed his eyes shut when suddenly he was fired down onto the corkscrew. His ears flooded with air as the carriage shot down into a horrible twist. He felt the thrill stabbing his heart and it felt like his lungs were being shoved onto the back of his ribcage. He opened his eyes and they were blasted with air, causing him to constantly blink. He took a quick glimpse at Blade who was blinking rapidly just like Will was. His head yanked forwards as the breaks caused the carriage to slowly skid to a halt. The track curved up leaving them both upright.

Will panted with relief as the ride finally ended. The background music went into his ears again, but this time it didn’t seem threatening. He’d conquered the ride. The music had failed its mission.

“Hooray for Will!” cheered Amy enthusiastically, later on. Will smiled proudly and was suddenly very happy.

“Well, I wouldn’t have been able to do it with out Blade’s support.” Sighed Will. Blade shrugged and patted Will on the back.

“Listen, I should be the one thanking you, for trying it although you didn’t want to.” Said Blade; getting in the queue for the Ferris wheel.

“I’ll sit this out, it’s just a Ferris wheel…” sighed Will, Blade agreed and they both went away and sat on a nearby bench.

A few minutes later, Amy and Susan were being lifted high into the air and then coming back round. There was a slight thrill to it on the way down, but it was more relaxing than anything of its other qualities. Susan’s eyes widened as they were being lifted up and around for a third time. She slapped Amy hard in her thigh and Amy quickly responded by turning her head.

“Look, look down there!” cried Susan as they watched a green-haired boy running away from another boy.

“Will!” Shouted Amy loudly. Will looked up at her and she quickly jabbed both of her hands in the direction that the boy was running. Blade wasn’t in sight so Will was the only one who could go after the two boys. He got up and charged off towards bundle of trees.

“Blade, I think we found the fifth member of our team,” Susan whispered; after getting off the ride. “But you missed him, he ran off a few minutes ago into the trees, and he was being chased by another boy. Will went off after him and I haven’t seen either off them since.”

They heard heavy breathing and turned around. Will stumbled over and grabbed onto Susan’s legs weakly. His eyes were red with pain, and his cheek had a huge cut on it. He rolled his eyes up into his eyelids, and dropped onto the floor. He lifted a hand in a huge struggle and Susan pulled him up. After a few minutes of sitting on a bench, Will had recovered and was ready to talk.

“Well,” he croaked “I got some good news, and some bad news. Which do you want first?”

“The intelligent person would go for the bad news, so that the good news would cheer them up.” Retorted Susan.

“Wait, I didn’t think that through,” murmured Will. “The good news is that I found who we’re looking for. The bad news is that he’s been beaten up and this kid is threatening him with a knife. I tried to do something, but the boy pushed me over and kicked me in the head, a lot.”

“Well, looks like we’re going to get in our first fight as a group then,” Sighed Blade “but I bet you there are more of them.”

 

[Jetx]

God dammit, how come I keep missing out words? When reading this thing through I realised I'd missed out like five words. But I wouldn't recommend reading this one if you're short on time. It's another biggy. :/

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Chapter 11: Pursuit (Nine Pages.) Meep.

Amy listened closely to the sound of the goblin’s feet as it sprinted away. The leaves crunching beneath its feet made it much easier. Eventually, after a long time following the directions Amy guessed the goblin was running in, they couldn’t hear it running anymore.

“It has stopped.” Said Amy; listening closely. They all decided to stop for a break until they knew where it was again. Graham sat down on a nearby log and smiled. He loved forests, but he didn’t think that made him different. He watched the forest around him suddenly noticing its true beauty; the sun glittering through the bright leaves; the birds chirping happily as they rested in their nests. The tall trees which led up high into the calm blue sky and the rain drops glistening in the sunlight as they slithered off the edges of the holly bush leaves.

He was just about to ask the others whether they’d noticed that a forest isn’t just a load of trees but they’d all already got up and charged towards the sound of nearby footsteps. Graham quickly got up and sprinted after them but his long fringe got into his eyes and he had to get it out. He tried to keep running but he ran right into a tree and was thrown back onto the ground. He brushed the leaves away from where was lying and stood up rubbing his painful head; he felt a couple of ants climbing up his neck and rubbed them off against the tree he had just hit.

There was an overwhelming sound of the rest of the group laughing, so Graham decided to get them back. His face grew bright red and he screamed with anger. He pushed off his legs with all the strength he had and leapt into the air. Amy jumped back and began to stumble away as Graham struck the floor in front of her with his two feet sending leaves into the air.

Amy was worried that it wasn’t a joke, he had been bullied so many times and perhaps he got depressed and angry with the world. There was also the fact that he thought they were his friends and friends don’t laugh at each other on the day they meet each other. She continued to walk backwards, and was trying to think of a good way to calm him down.

Graham’s hands grasped Amy’s shoulders with a tight grip and he looked like he was about to shake her about. Amy waited for Graham to punch her or hurt her in some way, but her thoughts were suddenly overpowered by the sound of laughter. She opened her eyes to see Graham, Blade and Will hitting the trees with their fists and roaring with laughter. Susan shrugged and tried to look like she was on Amy’s side, but she had trouble keeping a smirk off her face.

“Gotcha!” laughed Graham wiping tears from his eyes. Amy realised that she was still standing on one leg, as it was one of her automatic reactions when she thought she was about to get hurt. She stepped back with her right leg to keep her balance, but the group all suddenly heard a loud sound of tree branches snapping right above Amy’s head. Amy looked up and saw a huge grey boulder thundering towards her at an enormous speed.

She dived forwards just a split second before the boulder smashed onto the ground behind her. It sent a huge shock wave of the wrinkled dead leaves all over the place. The mud around it was thrown high into the air and the dirt rained down on top of the leaves. Amy was still. Her long legs were buried deep under a pile of mud and leaves and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Her heart was beating at an unstoppable rate. Her arms were in a press-up position which showed she’d used her hands to protect her as she fell. Though it looked very uncomfortable, she still wouldn’t move.

Blade quickly lay down beside her and gave her a friendly hug. But she still lay there with out moving. She opened her eyes and tears instantly ran down face. She leant over and hugged Blade tightly. He gently patted her back and tried to calm her down. She tried to speak but she was too busy taking deep breaths and slowly trying to relax a bit more.

“I- I… I thought I was going to d-die,” stuttered Amy. Blade hugged her again and then let go. But she rested her head on his shoulders and wouldn’t let go of him. Susan rubbed on the back and gently whispered in her ear.

“Don’t worry Amy, we’re all okay. It’s not your fault; we all just have to be little more cautious in future. You’re fine now, and you’re going to be safe.”

Graham leant against a nearby tree. He slid down it with his back until he was sitting down. He stared up into the sky and took a deep breath. He felt guilty about how his stupid joke was the thing that caused her to stand on one leg in the first place. Will could see the look of guilt in his eyes and knew Amy wasn’t the only one who had been affected by the recent event.

“Uh... Graham? C’mon Gray, it’s not your fault. I mean, you couldn’t help not knowing there was a killer trap right behind Amy. Luckily her instinct saved her so your stupid- let me rephrase that. So your joke is not what she’s upset about. You’ve got to lighten the moment because if she sees you all upset it will only make her feel worse.” Will waited for Graham’s response but he just rolled over and as if Will wasn’t even there.

“Go away,” grumbled Graham in a deep voice. “Just leave me alone. If it’s my fault, it’s my fault so I don’t exactly want to ‘lighten the moment’. I’m not exactly going to just talk to her normally and try to cheer her up as if I never even jumped onto her.”

Will was about to argue, it was his natural instinct. He’d spent his last few years with Susan and often argued with her. Now Graham was making one the irritating pessimistic replies that Susan always would. But for once his life he realised that he only going to make things much worse. So instead of trying anything he just shrugged and walked off to the rest of the group who were still trying to calm Amy down.

The goblins footsteps had stopped a couple of minutes after the boulder event and the invaders had a little more time to rest. Amy had now calmed down and was sitting on a log with the others. But Graham was still grumpily lying on the forest floor, ignoring the insects that crawled onto him.

Susan got up and walked towards the boulder. She closely inspected it and tried to judge its weight. It was only a small boulder, about three times the size of her head; but she still could not lift it. She looked up at the trees above and examined a tightly bound net which now had a huge hole right in the centre of it; obviously where the rock had come from.

“Hmm… It seems that the boulder hadn’t fallen through this net until Amy stood directly below it. But I see no mechanisms for pressure points there, which just makes no sense. The only real explanation I can think of is that Claxia’s creatures can use magic. So perhaps there is some sort of magic pressure censor that the goblin thing planted.” Susan tried to lift the boulder up again but it wouldn’t budge; which was surprising considering the fact it didn’t look like a heavy rock.

“I’ll move it out of the way so we can see if there are any magic pressure pads underneath it,” said Blade confidently. He reached down and grabbed the bottom corners of the rock. Susan stood there for a few seconds wondering whether he was actually trying to lift the rock or not. She crouched down and suddenly noticed how his body was vibrating and how his face had grown an extremely dark red. He took his hands away from the rock and dropped onto the floor. “I need Will’s and Graham’s help. But I just don’t get it; I would be able to at least shuffle this thing.”

Graham continued to lie down against the tree sulking. Will and Blade both tried to lift it together but it was still useless. They knew Graham wouldn’t make much of a difference as it was now obvious that the goblin must have made it heavier somehow with a spell.

“I’d like to say we’ll be able to spot any traps in the future. But I’m no good at finding them, so unless one of you knows how to spot traps, this pursuit will become very dangerous and difficult.” Susan sighed. Amy and Will shrugged, Blade had basic knowledge of spotting traps, but he knew it wasn’t good enough.

Graham’s eyes lit up. He finally figured out how he could make up for his joke earlier to the group. He quickly got up, suddenly noticing the amount of insects that were beginning to scurry up onto his neck. He shook them off and dashed towards the others.

“Never fear, Gray is here!” shouted Graham in a cheesy voice.

“That wasn’t even remotely funny,” replied Blade in a low and bored voice. “It sucked.”

“No seriously, Blade. I can easily find traps, because I’ve had a few bad experiences myself with deer traps and various other things that hunters have been using to kill animals. The most common are, as Amy just experienced, pressure traps. These are usually triggered by branches and leaves stacked up above a hole in the ground. The unsuspecting animal will spot a nice juicy piece of bait and climb onto the stack; then will fall down into the hole. However, this goblin thing probably wouldn’t put bait on its traps because it would just be too obvious. What it will do, however, is patch traps about all over the obvious path we will probably take. The goblin is smart and will make it so any alternative routes through the forest won’t be easy to use. So every few steps I’ll check for traps and we should stay safe.”

“Thank you for stating the obvious,” retorted Susan. “I’m just joking, some of that stuff sounds like a pretty good idea.”

The five slowly progressed through the thick forest, keeping a close eye out for any sneaky traps that the spy may have laid. But it was rather useless, they couldn’t hear the goblin nor see any traps, they could only hope they had not been following the wrong path. But Susan had already lost confidence of the trail; she decided not to show it because it would only cause a disagreement.

“So where are we going?” asked Graham looking around. The others all let off an annoyed sigh at the same time. “What?”

“We were following you,” moaned Amy. Graham frowned. He looked around again and hoped he could a see a sign of a trap. But there were none to be seen, but there was something to be heard. The sound of leaves crunching as something in the distance fled further away from them. “I think we’re back on course.” She added.

Blade took off after the footsteps enthusiastically, not realising how carelessly and quickly he was running. Worriedly, Will and Graham took off after him leaving Amy and Susan wondering whether running about in such a dangerous place, even if it was to help a friend out, was a good idea at all.

Blade skidded across the ground, he stopped so suddenly. The goblin was hiding behind a tree just a few paces away. First he had a thought about how slowly the goblin actually ran, but then he thought that the goblin wasn’t hiding from him. Perhaps the goblin was just waiting, waiting for Blade to clumsily stumble into a nasty trap it had nearby.

“Blade, hold up,” whined Will. Blade narrowed his eyes and stared at the floor, trying to make it obvious he had already stopped. “Oops- my bad…”

“Don’t go over there,” said Graham nervously. He pointed four trees that were together into a perfect rhombus formation, with about one square metre between each of them. It was right in front of them, and if Blade hadn’t stopped he would have ran right into the rhombus. Graham took a chance to pant whilst Amy and Susan came running up behind him. “Okay, I know it’s fairly obvious but that formation of trees clearly has a trap concealed within it. It don’t have a clue what it is, but I can see that goblin running off now and he wouldn’t just have stopped there for no reason. He knows we’ve figured him out.”

Blade pulled out his new knife. With a tight grasp of it he stepped forwards just a hair’s breadth away from the formation of trees. Quickly, he threw it forwards, then he leapt back to the rest of the group and speedily told them to stand back.

Eight spearheads, two from each tree, suddenly shot out of the tree trunks and pierced the knife with huge force. The knife split into two pieces before finally dropping onto the floor. Six of the eight spearheads had hit it with dead accuracy, their steel tips glistening prettily in the forest sunlight, but there was nothing pretty about a trap. Amy was just about to go and collect the broken knife from the floor but Graham wouldn’t let her go forward. Some traps were very deceiving and could strike twice. He picked up and large stone and slammed it onto the floor. A strong net suddenly sprang up from the ground and lifted the knife and the spearheads high up into the trees. It would have been a nasty trap. The knife blade then fell out of the net and Blade retrieved it from the floor.

Will frowned; he could imagine it perfectly. He could imagine eight spears stabbing into him, and then being cramped into a painful position and lifted high into the air in a net. Will happened to be the one who was always the most scared and worried out of the group. Although he couldn’t help it, he was not proud of his reputation.

“I think we should discontinue our trail,” said Amy worriedly. She couldn’t bear to see a member of the team die from just one trap. “This path is too dangerous…”

“We’ve come too far to go back now.” Blade said with a slight tone of anger in his voice.

“I’m supposed to be leader and it’s about time I started acted like one; now turn back. That is an order. What’s going to happen if one of you dies before we even reach Claxia? I’ll tell you what, we’ll lose heart, confidence and the spirit we have now.”

“I’ll do what I want, thanks,” said Blade angrily. “I don’t treat you as a superior person and I’m not about to start.”

Susan raised an eyebrow, she disliked Blade’s independence. He just wanted to do things on his own, whether it was for others or for him. “Listen to her, Blade.”

“Don’t get involved. Surely you don’t want to give up now, do you? That goblin will lead us to a place when we’re looking for. I don’t know if you remember, but the wizard said two important events would happen. Hence meeting Gray and finding and following this goblin. The goblin will lead us somewhere. I’m sure we can come to an agreement anyway; let’s see if Graham can decide. He won’t judge either of us and he is the one who’s leading us at the moment.” Blade looked at over Graham.

“I’m torn,” said Graham. “But I think we should carry on, being honest.”

“Listen, Gray, or Graham – whatever… I am very sure that the goblin is going to use a sneaky trap on one of us that could easily kill. You may be able to spot traps easily, but that doesn’t mean you won’t miss a couple out; and a couple of nasty ones at that.”

“Well, all I can really say now is it’s up to you… I don’t know whether we should carry on or abandon it, but I think seeing a goblin in this forest is a good sign. Also, I don’t mind if you call me Graham or Gray but I am more used to Gray.”

“Okay then, Gray. I suppose if you’re all so sure that we shouldn’t turn back, we should get moving…” Amy sighed.

“Amy,” hissed Susan as they all began to walk again. “It’s a sign of weakness to give into such a risk just because the majority of the group wish to continue. It’s hardly a vast majority, just three versus two. Besides, I don’t mean to be sexist when I say this, but girls are usually considered more mature than boys anyway…”

Amy let out a sigh and lowered her head slightly. It was as if she was ignoring Susan but she was just trying to think of something to say.

“We can’t just turn back, Susan. We’ve come too far. One more thing, if you really think we should turn back; why don’t you stand up to Blade and try to tell him what to do? Surely you know by now how aggressive and stubborn he gets when somebody with no real authority tells him that he should do what they say,” snapped Amy. Susan shook her head as Amy turned away. “Got nothing to say that one? Exactly, I suppose you’ve taken in my point and realised that it’s much more difficult than it seems.”

“I’m not agreeing with you, Amy. You don’t think of it yet, but have you forgotten we’re not just a group of people randomly exploring France looking for paranormal activities? Well, we’re not; from what I’ve heard so far we’re royalty in Claxia. Even though it seems rather pathetic how we know very little about the place. Amy, you are our leader; you do – or at least you will – have authority over the rest of us. It’s about time you stopped being so soft on everybody and started getting ready to be our leader. If you’re really that scared of one of your, let’s just say, friends. How about I help you persuade Blade, we’re pretty similar in a few ways, so you never know if he’d listen to me more than he does to you.”

“You want me to act like leader? Fine; I will. I’ll start by telling you that I have decided to go with the majority and continue walking; whether you like it or not. By the way, I hardly see how you’re similar to Blade. The only similarities I’ve picked up are how you both have dark hair, wear dark clothes and tend to be pessimistic a lot. And I’m not scared of Blade.” Complained Amy; she began walking at a faster pace so that she could keep up with the others.

Susan rolled her eyes and stopped trying to counter what Amy had said. She knew when her argument had lost; she also knew that getting Amy frustrated could temporarily ruin their friendship.

A light gust of wind brushed against the back of Susan’s neck and caused her to shiver. The sky was quickly growing darker and the clouds were beginning to close in. The sun was now getting low on the horizon. Its calmer brightness gave the nearby clouds a beautiful red glow and the sky was now painted a darkening yellow.

The group were still walking about half an hour later; they hadn’t said much to each other just a small few conversations to help them get familiar with each other. Gray and Will were beginning to show quite a good friendship and enjoyed chatting about each other’s interests. Which were often nearly the same.

The sky was now dark and the sun had sunk beneath a set of mountains that lay far in the distance. The mountains were only slightly visible as they were walking on the edge of a field and still kept strolling back into the forest. Cold drops of rain splashed onto the floor one, by one from the gigantic clouds that lay above. It was only a small dribble but it still did a good job of worrying the group.

“It’s getting dark. We’d best be setting up a camp,” said Amy quietly. She felt the drops of rain slither down her neck.

“But we can’t,” Blade sighed. He looked around for more traps and then spoke again. “It’s not safe to just go to sleep with some psycho goblin on the loose. He’ll get miles ahead. Either that or he’ll kill all of us. I can’t say I can trust one of you at a time to go on look out.”

Amy bowed her head. She leant against a tree and shrugged. She had an idea of what to say, but knew that not everybody would agree with her. That was the problem with being a leader; she wasn’t even used to it either.

“My only idea is for two of us to stay on lookout at a time, and they could keep each other awake. As well as doing things like crafting small benches for us to sit on when we have breakfast tomorrow morning – if we have breakfast tomorrow morning. Maybe the people on guard could also borrow Blade’s knife for self defence and for crafting. That’s all I can think of right now. We’ve got nowhere to sleep anyhow, no sleeping bags, not even a rag. Every hour the two people on lookout could get some sleep and swap with another two. Will could go with Gray; I’ll go with Susan and Blade, um…”

“I can pull it off on my own;” interrupted Blade “unless somebody else is actually willing to stay up with me as well as their other partner. One problem with your logic as well, Amy: I very cleverly, notice the sarcasm, threw my knife into a trap and it snapped in half. I think I’m the only person here who can actually craft with just a knife blade and no handle. I left the handle behind so I don’t think we could stick the knife back together either.”

“I don’t mind staying up with Blade. Not that I’m likely to get any sleep tonight anyway,” Susan frowned. “And I’d rather not. Dare I remind you that every time a new member joins the invaders we end up having a weird nightmare where Dargon comes along and beats us stupid? We’re lucky it is a half dream anyway; the pains of death are only half as bad if we’re half dreaming when it happens.”

Amy scanned the area around them; looking for a safe place to sleep for the night, but staying in the forest, though there would be the higher risk of insect bites, would be better than sleeping in the middle of a field in a position that could easily be seen from any aerial view. But she couldn’t see any places nearby that could allow five bodies sleeping next to each other without any trees getting in the way.

Her eyes narrowed on something in the distance, it was a somehow familiar sight. It looked like a load of round cylinders made of a soft material. She began walking towards them, trying to figure out what they were. The others quickly began walking towards the objects as well.

The quickly darkening sky made it difficult to navigate through the huge forest. The objects in the distance were now beginning to get difficult to see and seemed even further away than before, because the rain was now getting heavier; it was like a horrible cold shower. Like a strange mist it made everything far away invisible, but Amy still knew where she was going.

“Aw, I’m soaked!” whined Will. “We should be there by now.” He shivered.

“You’re not the only one. So just hurry up and stop complaining and perhaps we’ll be able to see what the things are,” Gray blinked slowly, trying not to shiver too much.

A few metres ahead appeared the objects they had seen. Bulging sleeping bags, metal pegs, rolled up foam mats and long steel poles. There was also a plastic land mat and a weathered tent with a few holes in it.

“It’s a trap,” said Gray instantly without hesitation. “Isn’t it obvious anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” Amy pondered the day back on the mountain where she and Blade had found two sleeping bags lying on the edge of the mountain. Back then it was the Fraidens helping them out; and perhaps this had just happened again. “You remember back on the mountain, don’t you, Blade?”

Blade nodded. He wasn’t just going to leave such an opportunity and just leave it as ‘a trap’. Slowly, he crept towards the damaged tent, avoiding any areas of the ground that could have a trap on them. He closed his eyes, suddenly wondering whether opening the huge flap that led into the tent was a good idea. His eyes opened again and he slowly pulled open the entrance to the tent.

An ear-piercing high pitched roar suddenly erupted from inside the tent. Blade screamed and stumbled backwards. He fell to the floor and opened his eyes; the expression on his face was one of pure horror. He got back up and ran towards the rest of the group; tears flew off the side of his face as he ran.

Blade got to the rest of the group and panted. He held his hand to his heart and felt the shock pumping into his veins. He pointed back into the distance, unable to speak. He then began running in the direction he was pointing in. Will followed him, not taking any chances.

There was another horrible screech from inside the tent. The flap ripped open and something began to slither out. It was like a huge yellow worm, probably longer than two fully grown men standing on top of each other. It lifted the front of its body revealing a nasty set of four massive fangs. Unlike any normal worm, it had some sort of head. It was just a stretched out mouth with four teeth on each corner the length of rats.

Amy, Susan and Gray fled towards Will and Blade. The worm slithered after them at a surprising speed. It shrunk itself into a much shorter figure and wrinkled up its smooth skin. Suddenly, it shot forwards, extending to an uncontrollable length. Its mouth gaped hugely and a ripple shot through its body. The ripple reached the monster’s mouth and suddenly came out as a glowing green liquid.

Amy jumped up as the liquid splattered beneath her feet. She waved her arms forwards in a desperate attempt to land in front the puddle. She landed painfully and fell down onto her front. Quickly, she got herself up and continued running; with a quick glimpse behind she saw a large circle of leaves turning a horrible green before crinkling up into a shrivelled dead black.

The worm snarled as it watched its prey flee. But it wasn’t ready to give up yet. Launching forwards, it locked its focus onto Gray, who was struggling to keep up with Amy and Susan, using its senses to navigate away from the trees. It had no eyes but it still knew what it was doing.

Gray let out a yell of fear as it noticed the worm speeding towards him, ready to let out yet another spray of highly dangerous poison. It was gaining on him quickly and he was beginning to realise that running wasn’t good enough to get away from it. However, he didn’t have enough time to rely on any other escape methods; he was just relying on his new friends.

Blade wasn’t going to let Gray down, either. He grabbed the blade of his broken knife a violently threw it forwards. It rocketed past Gray and looked like it was going to be a direct hit on the worm. But it wasn’t a clever idea to think that.

The worm suddenly came to a halt. It sensed how the knife blade was about to hit it. First it swerved its head to the right and then it sprayed huge bundles of the green poison out of its mouth again.

The poison hit the knife and it went from sparkling silver to ruined black; it then dropped to the ground and most of it had already corroded away. The rest of it continued to fly towards Gray at an alarming speed. He turned around saw it there. It seemed unavoidable; there was so much of it.

Gray fell to the floor and put his hands over his head, hoping the poison would fly straight over him. But he’d made a mistake; a very stupid mistake.