Risible Adventures of Rita Arthurs

Chapter 9 ~ Trials and Tribulations

Am I...dead? was the first thing Rita thought. She could not hear, see, smell, taste nor feel anything at all. Everything was black and empty; it seemed like an eternal abyss. Where am I? Why am I here? Rita kept thinking but then she remembered that she accidentally walked off the path and fell into this void. She should have listened to Marketa and been more careful but then again, the fog was so thick that it was hard to even see herself. There's no time to keep thinking this way Rita thought firmly ...Then again... It's not like I have to hurry somewhere... Right now I have all the time in the world...

It may have been minutes, hours or even days but eventually Rita started to feel that the numbness was wearing off and she could move again. It was a while until she could open her eyes but still see nothing since it was pitch black. She tried to feel around her and it seemed like she was on some hard ground, very similar to bricks but she was unsure. She tried to reach for her sword which was no longer there. As she started to feel about the ground, she saw a light in a distance and started to crawl towards it until she could finally see herself full of cuts and bruises and a hovering small blue crystal. As she tried to reach it with her hand, the crystal slipped away and hovered a bit further. Eventually, it led her to a lying sword – her sword. As soon as Rita grabbed her sword which started to glow, the crystal shattered and formed the Sapphire tribe's crest before completely fading away.

"Thank you... Marketa..." Rita muttered as she now started to look around with her glowing sword. Nothing could be seen around, there was darkness everywhere no matter how much or how hard Rita searched around. 'This place can play mind tricks on you so do not trust everything you see, hear, touch or smell' was the first thing that came to Rita's mind. The last time Marketa figured that there was something wrong, she said that the fog was an illusion but the fog only thickened meaning... it was not the right answer? What else could the fog have been though...?

"Ah!" Rita suddenly realised, "They were the clouds themselves... We merely walked deeper into the path made of them..."

The area around Rita seemed to brighten and she could see something ahead of her which looked like...

"A jungle?!" Rita has never been to one in her life but she has heard of stories and seen pictures of the tropical forest but the only question was, "Why is there a jungle in the middle of nowhere...?"

As Rita said those words, the light began to drain from the surroundings and realising that she should not say out pointless things unless she wanted to die, Rita ran for her life through the jungle where the light still remained. This carried on for a while until she noticed what looked like a temple into which ran into and closed the gates behind her. It seemed that the light did not drain from there so she must have been in the right place. Rita looked around the temple only to find that this was most likely just ruins of a temple since the walls seemed weary and the rocks were mostly eroded by the vines growing around them. She carried on walking forward, with her sword right in front of her just in case. The temple ruins seemed like a maze of shadows since the walls could be barely seen as it only got darker and darker. Before it got completely dark, Rita thought she heard a sound as if someone has tripped over a small pebble which rolled beside her foot. Looking up, Rita saw a pair of large red glowing blood-thirsty eyes of some creature which she could not see. Before she had any time to think things through, Rita made a run for her life not even sure where she was going. The creature was behind her, not falling behind. Rita randomly guessed which passages to take as she slid left or right, not looking back. Marketa's voice could be once again heard clear in her head: 'do not trust everything you see'. Just as Rita remembered it, she stopped right in the middle of turning left. She turned to face the so called 'beast' which was chasing her. As the red eyes approached her, she could now see that they turned white and small and a small bat flew past her.