[GlacierDragon]

Very distant releative. He's my great great granmother's boyfreind's other girfreind's great great grandson's girlfreind's brother. As you can see: very distant. Now where's my next chapter?

Well that confused me at first but I think I managed to get a mental image of the family tree.

Sorry for not posting this sooner but I've had huge writer's block. And I'm back to school now so I've got loads of GCSE rubbish to look forward to. Oh joy.

(A quick note; the part with Vechk happens at the same time as the part with Shrown. Hopefully there won't be any more of 'The day Shrown did this, that and the other...')

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Chapter 19

When I wake the rain has stopped but the sky is still covered in clouds, some of which have been penetrated here and there by the sun’s persistent beams of light. The land is wet and muddy, and the air smells clean and fresh.


Though it was the middle of the night and pouring with rain we began north as soon as we were out of the tower. We’d been lucky far enough, but if we’d stuck around any longer we were certain to get caught. No one argued as we decided upon this, and even though we were all tired and hungry we got going.

We left most of the patrols behind as we neared the river. There are more trees here, so before long we had less worry of being seen. When we were too tired to continue we found a spot to stop and went to sleep.

I stand and stretch. All the others are asleep so I try to be quiet as I make my way closer to the river. The water isn’t as brown as it was when we were closer to the tower, but it still doesn’t look clean.

From what I can see we’ve travelled further than I realised. The tower is still visible, but now it’s only a tiny, vertical speck on the horizon. If that’s how far we can travel in a few hours, then we’ll be a good distance away in no time.

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The Flying Scrab liked what it had been made into. The armour on its back was light and comfortable, and it found its new arms to be very useful. The creature found it strange that it had no memory of things before the Vykker began to look after it, but never did it stop to think why. It knew it once lived somewhere else and had only got its arms and armour recently, but that was all.

The Flying Scrab didn’t know what it was like outside the lab; in fact it didn’t even know there was anything outside. To it, Vechk’s lab was the whole world. At least this is what it thought at the beginning. But as time wore on and it began to learn new things, it also developed a growing sense of curiosity. It had seen it’s master leave the lab numerous times, and soon enough it began to wonder about things.

Vechk didn’t realise this, but the Scrab had held onto its old instincts when being brainwashed. Though the creature was as intelligent as any sentient being, these instincts still surfaced at times. It had soon learnt how to control them, but it couldn’t shake off the feeling that it should be somewhere else, that it didn’t belong. Most of the time it considered Vechk as it’s master, but other times it found itself seeing him as food.

The Interns confused the Scrab. There had been that one time when Vechk had given it one to eat, but never again did that happen. Sometimes the Scrab was let out of its cage and allowed to freely roam around the lab, but whenever an Intern came the Scrab was hastily ushered back into its cage. At first it thought that was where it needed to be in order to eat one, but soon it realised this wasn’t the case.

At times it longed to stretch its wings and fly away from the place, see what things were like outside the lab. It tired of being fed scraps of meat; being hungry most of the time. It tired of being told what to do, and being punished if it didn’t obey. But above all it tired of not being able to speak; to properly communicate with its master.

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Vechk had noticed that the Scrab was becoming increasingly agitated and frustrated. He didn’t know what it was thinking, so he didn’t know how to make things right. All he could do was hope things would settle down.>>

He had to keep Interns away from his experiment because the creature now saw them as food. He didn’t really care about this, but if anyone found out he’d fed one to it he would be in big trouble. So whenever he knew one was coming he had to lock the Scrab in its cage.

The Vykker sat down in his chair, sipping a cup of coffee. He picked up the morning’s edition of The Daily Deception, scanning the headlines. Something near the bottom of the page caught his attention. He quickly flicked to page the, where the story was, and began reading. It was something about several Sligs escaping from Queen Skillya’s birthing complex. They had all broken the law in one way or another and had been taken to the Queen for interrogation. A very large reward was being offered for their capture, but the one Queen Skillya really wanted was Slig number 5-12-3-27. No reason for the latter part was given, nor did Vechk care. All he was interested in was the amount of Moolah being given for their capture.

He glanced over at the Scrab, which was sleeping in it’s cage.