Written in Life

(Chapter 15)

I turned back and strained my eyes to focus on Cody.

"Cody..."

"I said I'm fine!" he yelled." Let's just get going." He walked past me and I looked after him. And then, he just froze... I ran up to where he was standing and looked him in the eye. Flashes of images sped by and I grunted in frustration. Why now? He was stuck in his story and I was stuck here. And I couldn't exactly just leave him here either. I sighed and sat on the ground at his feet, thinking. I looked around and noticed a faint glow in the distance, where we were going in the first place. I fiddled with the ring around my finger. It was becoming a habit.

I bit my lip nervously and looked u at Cody, frozen in his story's limbo. He couldn't be there long... then again could be there for hours, maybe days. I looked back to the light down the tunnel. I could always come back and get him later, and if he woke up, he would only follow the tunnel and probably meet me later... I stood up and looked at Cody, my stomach turning. It felt wrong to leave him behind, to go against the one rule that I followed, no matter what.

Never leave a man behind...

A flash of a memory exploded in front of me and I jumped, my heart aching at the ones I had lost, like it was just seconds ago. I closed my eyes and breathed. I turned and walked away, leaving Cody stranded in the middle of the wide tunnel-way. I walked towards the light and my eyes burned, adjusting a little too slowly. I finally reached the mouth of the cave and I shielded my eyes from the brilliance that flowed through. I looked around. It was like the room before with a giant city carved out of a massive piece of earth with moss and vines hanging from the ceiling and pieces of soft earth crumbling to the floor. It was extremely bright, a giant orb that looked like it was made out of water, shimmering and rippling with a luminance coming from its center.

Everything here was green. There was vast forest, lush scenery and grass growing on every nook and cranny of the gigantic room. I stepped out of the cave and warm, soft earth greeted my feet, toasting up the frosty feel if the cave's icy floor. My nightgown was now torn and still damp from being dragged down to the bottom of the lake. My hair hung down in frizzed, tangled strands and I had lost my overcoat during the plunge. I was now left with a one sleeved, transparent nightgown, with a bottom that was too long and tripped me every time I took a step. I sighed and tore the other sleeve off, gathering up the skirt and tying it loosely at my hip. I tied my hair into a tight knot and tried to map out how to get to the skyscraper building behind the vegetation I was standing in front of. I sighed and was on my way. I climbed over roots, under fallen trees, around bushes and shrubs and even climbed vines. Who says army training can't be used in the real world? The heat here was ridiculous and beads of sweat ran down my forehead and neck before I had even started through the forest. I stopped for a second and looked around, desperate for some sort of sign of where I was supposed to go.

Everything looked the same, and eerily familiar. Trees stretched up above me dizzyingly and everything seemed to be closing in on me. I sat down and breathed slowly, trying to keep myself from panicking.

Suddenly, a huge blue object slammed into me and knocked me from the log I was sitting on and into a sharp branch that dug into my back. I screamed and the object was gone, sitting up. I looked around again and held the fresh wound on my lower back. My hand came away smudged with black.

"Shit," I spat. The blue thing was back again and I noticed it was a giant beetle. It pinned me back to the ground and dug it's jagged feet into my shoulders. I held back a scream and stabbed it's stomach with a thorn bigger than my hand, digging it in past its hard exoskeleton. It let out an earsplitting cry and threw me, sending me rolling down a large hill. My foot got caught on a vine and my head ached, hitting against a jagged edge of rock. I could hear the hulk beetle charging through the leaves to reach me and I blinked the spots away from my vision. I felt bile rise up at the look of the drop of the cliff I was hanging off and screamed. I rolled to the side just as the beetle ran off the cliff, screaming until the sickening crunch of its exoskeleton shattering against jagged rock. I closed my eyes and sat in shock for a moment. I took a deep breath and sat up. I heard plunging footsteps and a purple beetle was charging right at me. You've got to be kidding me. I screamed and suddenly a black snake flipped it over on his back. A boy with black hair jumped from its back and with a flick of his wrist, the snake coiled around the beetle and lodged its fangs into the beetles head, a spray of green blood erupting from its neck. It fell limp and the snake seemed to melt into the black, thick liquid I was so used to. He knelt over and placed his hand in the ink. It slowly dispersed as the black substance trailed through his veins. He looked at me with familiar green eyes.