No Wings to Fly [ON HOLD]

Chapter 10

I stared at it for a moment before snapping back into reality. There were tons of questions going around my head; however I decided to deal with them at another point, as I was more focused on finding out what just happened.

Once I had swum across the short length of the river, I pulled myself onto the bank and ran toward the item that was lying on the floor. For some reason, there was a tiny beacon of golden light coming from it. Once I reached it however, the beacon turned off and disappeared, in a small gold puff.

I decided that that wasn't my main worry right now, so I crouched down and tried to wave my hand to get rid of the gold mist that lingered, and instead sent a small beam of weird electrical white light towards a nearby tree. It hit the trunk with a bang and burst into smaller lights that fizzed to the ground. I withdrew my arm and just looked at the tree in confusion.

"Okay. Should probably go ask someone about that sometime Pluto." I said aloud to myself. Shaking my head, I looked back down to see the mist had disappeared and all that was left was a small piece of paper. Talk about anti-climactic.

Picking the paper up and stuffing it into my shirt pocket, I wandered back towards the large building. I had many questions that needed answering.

After around 10 minutes, I arrived outside the large building, which I now remembered was called the Jaffa Factory. Once I got inside, I was met by a large amount of machinery, and it didn't look like there was any way up except if you were able to fly up these rings that were on each floor. I sighed again and turned back around. Apparently I'm going to have to wait until morning.

When I got to the shed, I opened the door and found Toby asleep on the bed, and Martyn sitting on the floor with his head against the bed, presumably asleep. I decided not to bother waking him up, so I walked into the other room as quietly as possible, closing the door behind me.

On one of the beds, lay a pile of clothes and a note next to them. Walking over to it, I picked up the note which read 'Spare clothes in case you want to sleep. Blue floor if you need anything. -Xephos'. I smiled to myself. Hospitality is quite a nice thing.

Once I had gotten changed, I opened the chest and picked up my clothes that were still damp from the river, and was about to fling them in when I noticed something shiny at the bottom. Placing the clothes back on the floor, I reached into the box and retrieved the small item, which turned out to be a ring. Upon closer inspection, I noticed a small engraving of a feather on it. I assumed this was a flying ring, and what they used to reached the higher levels of the factory.

I slipped it on my index finger and put my boots on, before grabbing the paper out of my shirt's pocket and headed back through the door. When I closed the door however, I forgot there Martyn and Toby were sleeping, and I heard one of them start stirring when the door slammed. Not wanting to get threatened by Martyn yet again, I bolted out of the other door and ran into the factory as quick as it was humanly possible.

Once I got in, I spun the small dial that was on the ring which I assumed turned it on and stood under the passageway to the different floor.

"Why couldn't they have just made some stairs?" I muttered to myself as I willed myself to move upwards, and somehow, against every odd, it worked. It wasn't difficult to control, and in a couple of seconds, I had reached the blue level. When I had landed I took the ring off in slight confusion and turned around, walking straight into someone, causing us both to drop what we were holding.

"Oh, sorry!" We both said in unison. I sheepishly bent down to pick whatever they had dropped up, when I suddenly grew concerned by what they had been carrying. A couple of books, a gun and a small piece of paper, like the one that I had. Ignoring all the other items, I picked up the piece of paper that I had and the one the other person was carrying, and realised they both fit together, and had been torn in half.