- Sdrawkcab Eman
- |
- Exalted Heroic Member
- gamertag: [none]
- user homepage:
Well, it's still today (although not in every time zone). And here's the next chapter.
****Chapter 5: Plunged into Darkness****
I was still standing in the dark, quiet phantom. Everyone was quiet. All I could hear was the gentle breathing of all of the grunts. Luckily, we weren't falling to our deaths. The phantoms do fly, after all. Nevertheless, I was feeling uneasy. The darkness of the phantom had induced a feeling of claustrophobia.
"What happened?" Pel whispered, after a while.
"How would I know?" I answered with a question. I realized how annoyed I sounded.
"Well I was just asking," Pel responded, weakly.
"Well I couldn't know could I!" I snapped at him. I felt extremely angry at Pel. "I can't see out of this annoying little ship, and I didn't plan to be taken from my home and stuffed into it! I don't care where we are, as long as those atrocious elites stay away from me!" The rage was building inside of me. The hopelessness of my fate had just hit me.
"HEY!" I heard another grunt yelled from across the pitch black interior of the motionless ship. "WHY DON'T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND LEAVE EVERYONE ALONE!"
"I'M SORRY!" I yelled, but not angrily, just loudly so that he could hear me over his own voice. "I just," I started to say, quietly this time, "realized how serious this actually is."
"It's ok," Pel said. "Others have been freaking out like that since we got here."
"Not as bad as you, though," another grunt piped up. "You ran into a wall then started going insane!"
"Yeah!" That was the voice of a third grunt. "You were running around in circles, yelling at everyone! You were running around in circles for hours! Then you ran into the wall again, and started acting normally again."
I had thought that my memory of myself running around in circles was a part of that dream. I remembered falling through the gravity lift. My expression turned to confusion. "How long was I doing that?"
I heard murmuring of all of the other grunts. I could image their heads turning to look at one another while they spoke, with looks on their faces as though I was public enemy number one. The tone in their voices made it seem like they all hated me. But the phantom was still unlit, and I couldn't see them.
"I don't know," Pel answered, after what seemed like an eternity. "Probably for about seven hours."
Seven hours? That seemed impossible! I remember running into the wall, then running around when I heard the voices. I thought the other grunts had been talking, but, maybe not. Then I had fallen out of the phantom through the gravity lift. After a while, the face talked to me, and then I was back here, after walking into the wall. It didn't make sense.
I needed to know more. "What was I saying?" I asked. "Did I do anything else?"
The echoing murmur of the grunts returned. It slowly drifted away, and was replaced by rustling and shuffling noises. The grunts seemed nervous, too nervous to even answer my question. Eventually, Pel answered. "You just told everyone to shut up over and over again, but, for a couple of minutes, you were saying something else."
"What?" I felt scared to even hear the answer.
"You . . ." Pel hesitated. I could tell that Pel didn't want me to know what I had said. "You said something about being in a forest with a burnt out sun that was lit by glowing green clouds." He paused again. Even though the lights were out, I could sense that everybody was staring at me. "You mentioned a face appearing and telling you about something that would happen to us."
I thought about it. I remembered the face, but all I remembered the face saying was ‘Don't let them put that in your head. You didn't let them the first time!' What else did I say? Did the face say anything else to me? Maybe I was in that peculiar dream world for longer than I thought, but I couldn't remember it all. The easiest way would be to let Pel tell me. "What did the face tell me?" I asked him, before realising that the whole question made me sound stupid, as though I believed the fictitious face to be real.
He answered me anyway. "You said that the face told you . . ." he paused again. "Don't let them put that in your head. You didn't let them the first time! I'll stop them first. Then you stopped talking, and walked over to me. You whispered into my ear. You said that the face told you it'll plunge all of us into darkness before they put that in our heads!"
"Plunged into darkness?" I asked, carefully.
"PLUNGED INTO DARKNESS?" another grunt yelled. All of the others started yelling, both at me, and each other. The phrase "Plunged into darkness" seemed to echo throughout the phantom as all of the grunts yelled it. That's when I remembered what the grunts were yelling before, when I was running around like crazy. At least, it was what I thought the grunts were saying. What I thought I heard every grunt yell, was exactly what they were yelling now. Plunged into darkness.
"QUIET!" Pel yelled. "ALL OF YOU! STOP! NOW!" The other grunts gradually stopped chitchatting. "You think because he thought a face that doesn't even exist told him that we'd be plunged into darkness that this is his fault!?"
The air inside the phantom was quiet now, quieter than ever. For a few short seconds, I could hear Pel's voice echoing off of the walls. A couple of the grunts coughed. Some more of them made a few mumbling noises. The silence remained for what seemed like years.
"Did you hear that?" a grunt asked. It was quiet before, but the silence seemed stronger now. It was almost as if the air was quieter than silent, as though any possible noise was being suppressed by everybody's desire to hear the sound. I was listening now, to try and detect the minuscule sound that the grunt had heard. I heard it. It sounded like a popping noise from outside of the phantom.
"What is that?" It was Pel's voice. The quieter than silent became an eerie silence. My ears were tuned to that popping noise. I held my breath. I heard some other grunts do the same. I strained to hear any puny sound that there was to hear. I heard it again, to my left.
"There!" the grunt that had originally asked about the sound yelled. I heard a loud clang behind me. I instinctively whirled around, only to find the same darkness that had filled the phantom long ago. I heard the clang again. This time it was louder, and closer. I heard a third clang, and I jumped. This one was louder than the last two combined. The sound was shortly followed by a thud. It sounded as though it was inside the phantom, in the very room we were standing in.
"Is there something there?" somebody asked. Their voice was followed by the high pitched noise of something small hitting the floor. I put out my arms in front of me, and walked forward, trying to find the source of the noise.
Suddenly, a green light appeared ahead of me, and a low pitched humming noise was emitted by it. I came to a halt. I saw that the green glow was at the end of a grunts arm, which was dimly illuminated. Part of the phantoms floor was also lit. I saw that the grunt was wearing some kind of mask, as well as a tank on his back. Two more grunts, both wearing a similar mask and tank and holding their own green light dropped onto the floor, through some kind of opening in the ceiling.
"Finally, we're saved!" a grunt cried out from behind me.
The grunts wearing the masks looked at one another. "Why is there a phantom is this realm?" one of them asked. The other two shrugged an answer. The three of them walked around the room, waving the glowing light at the end of their arms through the group. Everyone was scattered almost evenly through the phantom. I watched as they circled and examined the other grunts. One of the grunts finally walked over to me, and when I was lit up, he stared at me, and then Pel. I could only see the grunts familiar looking eyes through the mask, but he looked astonished at the sight of me.
He ran back over to the opening where the three masked grunts came into the phantom. "You two, follow me!" Quickly, he added, "and DON'T say our names! Don't!"
"What, what's going on?" one of the masked grunts asked. They both ran over to their companion near their entrance.
"I'll tell you later!" He jumped up and grabbed something above him. The light at the end of his arm showed the outline of a square opening in the ceiling. The other two followed his lead. "We have to get this phantom back out of this realm! Everything depends on it." His voice echoed into the room. Followed by some more clanging noises, the three grunts were gone.
The lights came back on. The engines started again. All of the grunts cheered, except for me. I slowly walked through the phantom, to where the three masked grunts entered the phantoms interior. I peered upwards as I walked, looking for the opening that they fell through. I couldn't find it. All I found was a message carved into the ceiling, in the same spot that the masked grunts had vanished.
"Pel!" I called. "Come over here!"
Pel ran over, running around other grunts on his way. "What?"
I sidestepped to my right, and pointed to where I was standing before. "Stand here!"
After a delay of a few seconds, Pel stood where I was pointing. I jumped onto his shoulders. Not expecting it, Pel flinched and leaned forward slightly. Then he put his arms out for balance. When he was stable again, I looked up at the message that was carved into the ceiling. It read, "Don't let them put that in your head. You didn't let them the first time!"