The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 18 - Lady, I think you have a problem

You have no idea how uncomfortable sitting on a cold hard wooden floor, your hands cuffed behind your back, for five hours actually is. Then again, I don't think anyone else could ever say they had gone through something like that, unless that's how you conduct your business and then I'm not shaming anyone. But that being said, I did share some sympathy with the criminal in the back of a police car as this was far from pleasant.

After our prompt discovery, and I had been de-beasted, all three of us had been marched down the train to what seemed to be a storage car. Heavy boxes and lines of chains were strewn haphazardly in a way that meant one of us had a very likely chance of getting squashed. But our captors didn't seem to mind that as they searched our pockets and took away everything except the clothes on our backs. Our gear, backpacks, tools and most alarmingly our weapons and our amulets had all been taken away further up the train, presumably to this 'Boss' they kept referring to.

We all started kicking up a bit more of a fight when I felt someone fiddling with the straps of my scabbard, so naturally I kicked the guy in the crotch only to be restrained by three other dudes, one of whom fully removed my scabbard from my belt and another one actually pulled my amulet from over my head. The other two were in a similar state of screaming profanities right up until we were all thrown into a corner and the door was slammed in front of us, locking us all in. Sheira tried to comfort me by saying that there was no way they could hurt Flame and even Shadow said that Incaendium had a few defence measures in place but that wouldn't take away my misery at losing two friends.

But even if we did have our weapons at hand we still had the teensy, weensy little problem of being handcuffed. Shadow did attempt to pick the lock at one point, but he quickly got frustrated and started slamming his bindings against an iron post shouting between crunches that the cuffs didn't even have a key hole and when he finally calmed down and sank to the floor next to us he said that the cuffs were Unalocked and only one master key could let us all out. In other words, we were stuck until the big boss decided to free us and we had no idea how long that was going to take.

Time was also proving to be another issue, mainly we had no way of telling when it was. There were no clocks, no windows and even when we peered through the cracks between the wooden panels all we saw was a constant shade of blackness. We also couldn't tell where the train was going as it seemed that every five minutes it would lurch to a stop, hover in place for god knows how long and then suddenly race off only to repeat the whole process a few minutes later. Add to the fact that we didn't know how fast we were going meant that it felt like they were purposefully trying to disorientate us.

Since we didn't have much else to do all three of us took it in turns to take small naps and tried to let our body clocks take care of the rest. I went last only to be nudged awake by Sheira who pointed out the thin beam of dawn light pushing through the cracks. Even I knew that it meant it was about 5am at this time of year. I was about to shuffle forwards and peer through the wall when the door to our prison swung open and two men strode through. One was a crap your pants type scary and would have made Shadow look short, and the other one was a weedy little kid who wouldn't have lasted five minutes, scratch that, five seconds on my estate before being snapped in half.

The big dude hauled us too our feet and shoved us towards the blinding sunshine and down into the rest of the train itself. The insides looked like a war documentary. Almost every carriage we walked through, at least fifteen if I had to make a guess, were filled to the brim with people, all huddled against the walls wearing ragged clothes and thin blankets to keep out the damp and the cold. There were at least a hundred per carriage and they were all packed as tightly as possible like sardines in a tin. So, this is where all those people went, I thought sadly as we were pushed on through door after door.