Sorry this took so long. I wrote the first third and got stuck, wrote the second bit and gotkicked off cause it was nearly midnight and just finished it. ok T, sorry about scaring you but you can stop being scared now and read...
Chapter 13, It’s a Long, Long Way
"Did we get him?"
"Yeah, he just keeled over into the ditch. If he’s not dead he’ll soon wish he was anyway."
His partner shuddered: escapees didn’t get off easy in this place. The other slig went on:
"What beats me is how he got over the wall."
"Just a power cut, that’s why the wire lit up like that, can’t take the sudden heat. The thing needs repairing anyway: might have to get all of it changed after that. The whole thing might have been fried."
"Well, we’ll check tomorrow morning. Come on," He reached for the pack of cards on the table they stood next to, "My turn to deal."
A muddy ditch ran round the outside wall of the building: originally it came from when they had put up the walls and hadn’t had enough earth left over to fill up around the outside of the concrete barrier’s foundations. When it was found out that it proved a nasty shock for anyone who tried to break either in or out, it was left there.
It was in the ditch that, cold, wet and caked with mud, sweat and blood and unable to walk or even put weight on his left leg, Aaron lay. And despite all this, he was still alive, still breathing and still wondering how the hell he was ever gonna get the Orb across miles of open countryside when he couldn’t even walk.
Making up his mind, Aaron reached up and tried to drag himself out of the ditch. A moved about a foot before being overcome with exhaustion and pain. He slipped back down into the mud and lost consciousness.
Silence. Darkness all around him, darker and quieter than anything he’d ever experienced before. No weak light to cast even the faintest image, no hum of machinery or sound of heavy, painful breathing other than his own. Aaron tried to move but couldn’t feel his body: not in a painful or numb way, but as if he was just a spirit floating in a dark space.
Am… Am I… Dead?
Slowly, and from what seemed like miles off, a dim, flickering blue light that seemed to be floating as he was.
But it wasn’t just floating; it was moving towards him. Slowly at first but gradually gathering speed it drifted towards him through the dark nothingness.
It was rushing towards him at a tremendous speed now: fast enough to kill him if it was anything solid. 20 metres away, 15, 10, 2!
Less than a metre away from him the ball of light froze as if it had run into an invisible brick wall. It floated in the darkness and seemed to pulsate slowly in an almost hypnotic way. Aaron found himself unable to look away from the bright ball of steadily growing and shrinking blue light.
Then it slowly began to change shape. Like wax melting under a burning candlewick, it slipped into the body-shape of a mudokon formed of blue light. Aaron gazed into where its eyes should have been for what felt like an age before, as quickly as a speeding bullet, it seemed burst upwards, doubling in size, and then, like a swarm of paramites leaping on their pray, it dived onto him.
Immediately Aaron’s sense of touch returned and Aaron felt his legs and feet and hands scream aloud with pain! It was like a year of agony was squeezed into half a second and then…
The pain was gone. Like that. And it was replaced with a feeling in his whole body as if it was freshly formed. No pain, no damage, every part of his body was in perfect working condition.
Then he felt his eyelids pushing themselves downward against his will. For several seconds there was just the darkness of having your eyes close on a cloudy night. And then the power that was forcing his eyes closed seemed to vanish and he opened them to find himself lying in a ditch plastered with cruelly cold mud and with a warm green ball clutched between the fingers of his right hand.
Aaron pushed himself to his feet before remembering the snipers on the wall and ducking down again. He couldn’t believe it. His hands and feet and legs: completely healed. The scars on his back were gone. It was like someone had clicked the refresh button on his body and every injury he had ever had, every ache and illness was gone. Wiped away.
He stared down at the Orb that he was instinctively clutching tightly in his hand. Had it…? He remembered the blue light in his dream: it had moved into the shape of a mudokon. He looked around sharply as if expecting to see the answer written on the wall.
How far could a shaman send his power? He’d never met or seen one, only heard tales and legends. He looked around again and caught site of a glow on the eastern horizon. The sun! Dawn must be drawing near! What time was it? How long had he been asleep? He reached into a fold in his loincloth and pulled out the compass he’d nicked.
He was already sure which way East was because of the sun but he wanted to be certain. Yes, he was facing south. Crouching low, he leapt out of the trench and ran across a grassy plain, dotted with stunted bushes.
"Is he ok?"
"He’s awake and he’s fine. He’s to far away for me to see what he’s doing other than that he’s running south."
"Good." The Old Mudokon standing in front of his cage didn’t answer. "Look, I’m sorry about the-"
"Wha?" He looked up in surprise, as If he’d forgotten Bill was there. "Sorry, I was thinking. Aaron’s got a long way to go…" He seemed to be slipping into his own thoughts again but suddenly looked up, "Sorry, what was that?"
Bill sighed. "Doesn’t matter. Hey, do you think you could do your healing trick on me?"
"Don’t you think it would look a bit suspicious if all your "permanent" wounds suddenly vanished overnight?"
"Yeah, I guess. I-"
They were interrupted by an alarm sounding somewhere far off in the building. "They’ve found out the Orb’s gone." He turned to run before stopping and turning back to bill. "You’re gonna get punished for this."
"Yeah, I know." Bill wasn’t looking forward to the next day. Being in the nearest cage to an escapee’s was never a good thing and they wouldn’t go any easier on him when the Orb had been stolen the same night.
"Listen then, you were asleep when the alarm woke you, you don’t know why it’s going off and… And you might have seen someone run past your cell in the night. Tell em that and they might go easier on you."
"Yeah, ok." And the Old Mudokon, the Shaman, was gone…
If the format's different in this chapter it's cause I've just changed my Forums connection style thing to be more helpful only it's acctually being less helpful
. Stupid thing
(Ah, now i feel much better)
People love me! NOW LOVE ME!
