The Necklace: The Trial Realm

Chapter Six: Boot Camp and Bad Asses

"I want to go home." I mutter, my finger pressed against my lips.

Oliver leans down and tilts his head. "What's the matter?"

"It's too much." I tell him and the group that are all looking back at me where I've fallen behind on the way into this crazy big building. "I'm not cut out for this, and I want to go back."

Oliver looks back at the others and then to me. "It's not too much." He whispers. "You're just afraid."

"Yell, yeah." I nod hard, obviously I am. Trying to be tough got left back in Utopia.

Left back in Utopia.

Like everything else.

Security, no matter how small, my home, no matter how dirty, and my friends. I left it all behind to follow a group of strangers. I kind of still thought maybe this was all a big joke or something right up until the moment when I opened my eyes and I was just here.

Oliver is wrong about it not being too much. It's more than that. I can't even give names to the things I see, or know how to react to things that I come into contact with. It's otherworldly, because it is...another world.

I opened my eyes with a brilliant dark sky over head that didn't look quite so different from the one I looked up at in the Ring. There were more stars, and their greatest star, which they call a moon, lit the whole scene around me. Where the Ring was flat and covered with dirt, Earth is so hilly and covered in colors, even at night. Trees grow up all around and in places become so thick overhead that you can only see little snippets of the sky above us. The ground is spongy and wet under my feet and shows brilliant green in the light of the moon and stars. Walls of rock covered in moss, water that runs a crystal clear color along the path, fish that are yellow and red and green, things flying in the air and perching up high in the branches to look down at us, seeming to ask 'who?' over and over.

And now this?

We had appeared behind a wall of water that seemed to just fall from the sky and came out from behind this 'waterfall' to walk along a narrow rock path until we entered what they say is the 'jungle'. The jungle seemed alive all around. It was so noisy out there, but then we came to a huge building out in the middle of it all, seeming out of place even to me.

A giant fortress of metal with tons of windows and one big door at the front that other people bustling in and out of it as it were normal. Because for here, it is normal, but not for me.

Tawny would lose her mind if she saw this.

"Mali, what are you talking about?" She'd asked when I found her in the wallow and tried poorly to explain that I was leaving.

"I don't have long, but I was kind of right about Oliver. He isn't a Worthy, but he isn't from here either. And there are more of them. If I go with them they'll pay to take care of you and the others, plus Mr. Mags. So I have to go."

She'd shaken me by the shoulders like she could shake the truth out. "What others? Are you in some kind of trouble? You can tell me and we will figure a way out of it. Just like always."

That had made me tear up, just like it does remembering it. "I promise, I'm not in trouble. At least, I don't think so. And it's a chance I've got to take if it means I can take care of you all."

"No, Mali, you can't do whatever you're thinking." She held onto my hands tightly. "We've always made due before and we can continue to do that."

"That was before, Tawny. The fighting pits are over now, anyone caught trying to fight will be executed for everyone to see. I've got no other choice for how to help out around here and we both know if I stay I'll get into trouble for fighting sooner or later. This way I can keep my own neck safe and put food in your stomach at the same time." I'd tried to reason with her with the truth because I knew it was the only thing likely to convince her. "Plus, I want to go with them. They say they can take me out of here, Tawn. To a place that is so different from here. I've got to at least see it."