A Journey Through Time

Chapter Two: A Skull in Flames

Alexandra came back holding a trash can lid in her left hand, holding it up like a Spartan shield. 

"I'm back!" shrieked Alexandra, running towards the glowing orb at the end of the alley. 

"Well come on then! Let's go!" yelled Jacob in reply. 

As they jumped toward the orb, they heard that dampened humming noise again, but when they looked behind them, they couldn't see anything. They were entirely surrounded by red and green... 

"It... it's like... Christmas..." mumbled Alexandra, awe-struck by the warm glow around them... 

"What?" questioned Jacob, completely confused from Alexandra's comment, "all I see is two dull colors!" 

"Christmas, you know, the time when the people take a tree, put it in their house, and cover it with red and green decorations and glowing lights!" 

"Yea, but how did you know what it was called?" 

Alexandra fell silent and the colors abruptly disappeared. 

They were in a forest and they could see a village in the distance, shadowed by a burning red mountain... 

"Whoa..." muttered Jacob, the red glint of the peak reflecting off his mirror-like eyes, "where are we?"

After about an hour of walking, they found the village. 

The villagers were nice and generous, and gave them plenty of food. They both felt full after just a few minutes of eating, due to their small intake of actual food. 

Jacob ran off into the woods to make a tent out of whatever he could find there. 

"Thanks!" yelled Alexandra, starting off toward the forest to build a little camp of her own. 

"Qi vadtakro!" yelled the druid of the camp, speaking in some odd language the two couldn't understand, "Anschi liika!  

The druid tossed them both a shining garnet ring, and the two both put them on. 

"A gift, for our newly found friends, Jaacob, and Alizandria!" yelled the druid, who was wearing one of the shining rings himself. 

"Wait a second... how can we understand you now? Just a few seconds ago you were speaking in some strange kind of jibber-jabber, and now, in perfect English!" Alexandra challenged.

"First of all, I'm not speaking English. It's Ranschai. And second of all, RANSCHAI IS NOT RANDOM JIBBER-JABBER!!!!!" screamed the druid, enraged by Alexandra's rude comment about his language. 

As the druid stomped off to his hut, the two castaways said goodbye and ran off to the forest...

“Hey!” Yelled Jacob, staring at the spot where the glowing sphere had been, “Where’d the orb go!?”

While Alexandria searched the area for clues of where it had gone, they both heard a dampened laugh coming from deep in the forest…

They both ran to where they heard the laugh coming from, and all they saw was a skull, casting an eerie glow on the trees around them from a candle inside. Jacob ran up to it, and kicked it into a nearby pile of leaves, setting it ablaze.

“Run!” shrieked Alexandra, covering the fire in wet leaves from a nearby pond.

Jacob tried to run, but it seemed that some invisible force was pushing him back.

“Let go…” said a quiet voice in his head, “listen to me…”

“Who the heck are you!?” screamed Jacob, pushing against the strange barrier behind him.

“Who I am, is not important. Now listen to me!”

“What do you mean, who am I!?” screeched Alexandra, entirely confused by what he had just asked, “I’m Alexandra, and you know that!”

Suddenly, Jacob’s eyes started glowing, and he screamed a word that Alexandra couldn’t understand.

The fire, and everything else around it, suddenly exploded into a misty gray gas, and Jacob collapsed.