The Sketch: The Voyage of Soal

Menacing Seas

It was dark and misty, and cold too, in the rocky place where Sam awoke. But he wasn't in a cave. And surely he wasn't in the boarding school. He quickly got his bearings, and noticed he had nothing with him except the clothes on his back. Looking around, it was early night, or the sun was going to rise in any moment. The stony surface of jagged, pointed rocks smoked with steam. But they were ice cold to the touch. And Sam was standing on a smooth spot. And there was a path of smooth rocks beside him! He appeared to be in an empty river, and the steps led out of it. So, following them, he quickly got to the banks. But there was a sudden cutoff on the land. It was as though a giant scythe had split the land in two, and destroyed the other half. An empty, foggy void of nothing, possibly thousands of feet deep, lay feet in front of him. Scanning around, he could see a brownish-blueish-greenish shape through the fog, miles away, a horizontally stretched cube of sorts. It appeared to be made of water, with islands dabbing its surface and great waterfalls on the sides. And it was floating in the emptiness. It looked like Sam wasn't in the main place of this... wait!

He remembered using the Sketch to get here, probably. When he circled the brown bird's head, it was as though he was choosing where to go. So this is Sam's final destination. How would he make it to the great mass of water?

He waved his hand through the vacuum and found it was filled with water vapor. Waving his hand in a certain spot, he felt ground, and a narrow rainbow platform appeared. Stepping onto it as he got up, Sam felt in front of it. More of the solid surface! This could be the way to the mainland.

He ran across the straight platform, occasionally making a gradual ramp up and down, until after about thirty minutes of walking and jogging, he made it there, to a broad tan bridge on the edge. It was a funny bridge that curved around and led to every different island. And everything was so colorful here too. Sam felt he might actually want to live here. Walking forward across the bridge towards an island, a wide red volcano, which seemed to be luring him. As he thought this was the perfect world, he felt something unnaturally fuzzy brush against his hair as it flew off towards his destination.

It was a gigantic hand, leaving a trail of exhaust behind it, bigger than Sam was. And it was colored completely black, as in the darkest shade of any color. This was clearly highly unnatural. The eerie creature seemed to be joining hundreds of others inside the volcano, through a hole in the left side. Running towards the entrance, Sam felt he had something to investigate. He sprinted through the gate to find that the inside was almost completely lava. It was a sea of it, with islands made of a hot red rock dotting the shallow sea of death. And he heard a scream.

The dark hands were flying above a bridge, and Sam followed them. The bridge led to another doorway. In this chamber, there was no lava and it was very dark despite the other room's existence. And it was much smaller than the other one. On the ground lay a stray helmet, one that looked like it had been used by knights of times long past. It was a spiked helmet with three large feathers on top, and it fit him perfectly. Sam felt safer with it on, and felt a sense of ownership, too.

A black hand blew a hole in the roof of the cave, and more did too. Lava dripped from the ceiling. Making his way to the next chamber, he heard more screams, except this time they were more clear. They were in this room, an even darker one, that looked like a hallway. There was a small portion to the left, and a long one to the right. Turning to his left, he saw a small brown bird, with large eyes and a banana-shaped long beak, that looked exactly the same as the one on the paper, shivering with fright. It was a female, and she was terrified, sitting against the rocky wall.

"Don't worry!" Sam knelt to the bird and patted her on the head. "Everything's okay." He was struggling to contain his fear as well. All the girl bird responded to was to point her thin, brown, triangular wing behind Sam. Slowly standing up and turning his head, a massive black glove hovered behind him. It was three times larger than the normal black hands. Immediately it grabbed him and began to choke with all of its mighty force, stronger than any of its probable servants. But then the girl stood up with a burst of bravery, and drew a bow, piercing the glove with a few perfectly-shot arrows. After that she ran past them through the hallway into the bright white light.

The glove just shook off the arrows and continued to strangle Sam, even though he hopelessly tried to fight back. After a moment, a foot-long, flaming red dragon flew into the black glove and exploded! Dropping Sam, he ran away towards the light as more spiked fire-dragons sailed past his head and towards the glove which was now quickly clambering against the walls to chase him. As he passed a certain point in the hall, a wall of rock slid shut behind him, holding off the glove for a little bit. Finally, Sam made it to a balcony on the edge of the volcano as the sun rose. The bow-wielding girl was there, and a larger bird about a foot tall as well looked up to him. She was another female, with bushy eyebrows and a haughty smirk on her face, followed by guilt and amazement. She was carrying a crossbow with another dragon loaded and ready to shoot.

As the glove broke through the wall of rock, the new bird held out a bright white crystal, which glowed a beautiful gray light, (better than all of the red light he'd been seeing recently) to which the giant black glove cringed and flew away. It went into the front of an enormous swarm of black hands, which all flew away into the fog, towards Sam's starting point. Daylight had broken.

"Idiot," Bushy Eyebrows muttered to Sam, "Don't just stand there. It's the basics of battle. Harm or be harmed, you knucklehead."