The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 15 - Shadow. Map Reader, Coach, Madman

So yet again, we were off walking. Seriously, why the hell did elementals have to make everything so remote to the point that the only way you could reach them was travelling for hours on foot over hill and dale only to find that the places we were making a beeline for were either abandoned or trashed to the point that it looked like a war zone (Thank you Shadow). I was actually beginning to think that I might have accidently wandered into scene from Lord of the Rings, minus the orcs of course. Then again it wouldn't surprise me if they were real at this point.

According to Shadow, who was leading our little convoy, we were heading towards a sort of train yard, a dumping ground for carriages and engines that were either not in use or were about to be scrapped, not a bad place to hide, but it was also in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest civilisation being fifteen miles away so if something went wrong we'd be stuck in the middle of god knows where with nowhere to run.

Sheira had thought this as well, because for the last half an hour she'd been running through backup plans with me, with the occasional grunt coming from Shadow to let us know he was listening. So far the idea's that we had come up with varied from find a vantage point away from the yard so that we could scout out the exits, to send one person in to negotiate while the other two watched from the side-lines, ready to intervene, to finally run in there, guns blazing and sprint very fast in the other direction if they shot back (Guess which one was Shadow's input). Needless to say, Sheira freezing his head as a way of telling him to button it or die was very effective.

But then again, we were following Shadow, as he was the only who seemed to know where we were going, and he was holding that weird compass of his. Apparently it showed whatever we needed to see but I couldn't tell you how it worked even if I had a PhD in physics. I had tried of course by peering over Shadow's shoulder, but the whole thing was totally unreadable, the gem in the centre would suddenly pulse violently for a few seconds before fading out into nothing while smaller gemstones zipped around the edges like they were from Close Encounters. However, what was even more concerning was the fact that Shadow occasionally stopped to hit the thing before setting off again, which was really comforting. Not!

But he was the designated leader, the man with the plan, the chap with the map (That's not a saying but it rhymed so what the heck), so Sheira and I weren't in a place to argue, we just figured out how to get out of dodge as soon as humanly possible if something went drastically wrong. And knowing our luck, which had previously got us shot at, stabbed, at, almost set on fire and had dropped us into more fights than you could shake a metaphorical stick at, this probably wasn't going to end well.

Granted we had to get there first. I'd realised why Maverick had said that it would take his brother three days to get to where he needed to go as how on earth he managed to make that hike with two kids was beyond me. We had been walking none stop for about four hours at this point, with the blazing sun beating down on our necks and there wasn't even the slightest breeze to offer any form of salvation. This summer was turning Britain into Spain and I was wishing something that went against every part of my English being. I wanted rain.

I know. Shocking.

Every stream and running water was our personal godsend where we could refill our water bottles and splash cool water on our faces. Shadow had cracked first. He made it about an hour before he had his leather jacket suspended over his head like a canopy and a roof of darkness hovering over his head to absorb most of the sunlight, but with the fact that he was in all black, sweat may as well have been dripping off him. Sheira was especially struggling. Ice must mean that you're a little bit more vulnerable to heat, but he was trying not to show it, but she was walking a lot slower than Shadow and I. I fell back and carefully shrugged of my jacket and spread it over our heads.