The Prodigies: The Return of Equinox

Chapter 53 - Ordered: Before the Sentence

The boat began to vibrate. Along with it the swamp seemed to dry up and wither away. The wetness that hung thick in the air began to go away. The sweat that clung to their bodies begun to evaporate. After not too long the ground began to shake violently in bursts. Along with the shaking, the earth began to split and crack.

"What the hell is going on!" screamed Seilana. Like the rest of the group, she couldn't stand or even lift herself off the ground from the shaking. It seemed like the earth itself was fighting them. Finally after what seemed like ages, the shaking stopped. Before they had time to recollect themselves they started to fall again.

They fell far, and landed onto a dune of soft sand. The boat, with its wards still in place, barely held together. Seilana finally found her footing when the boat had begun to slide down the dune. While it was no lake, the rudders provided some sort of help in steering the wooden mass. Not that it mattered much since there were no obstacles for what looked like miles. As they slid their sight grew shorter and the darkness intensified. They couldn't even see ten feet in-front of themselves when Celesta had finally cast a light far out in front of them. They saw then that they were on a mountain rather than a dune, and they were approaching a valley.

Celesta, with as much concentration as she could muster at the moment, moved the sand in-front of them and at the bottom of the valley in such a way to slow them down and give a soft landing. Literal tons of the stuff was moved, and after a few minutes Celesta sunk back onto the floor boards of the boat. She was nearly exhausted beyond sense. She slowly began to pull energy from the world around her, but there was no abundance like she was used to. The deepness of this hole they were in held almost no sustenance for her grandiose spells. She would need to start digging into emergency reserves.

Ellondra saw movement just below the surface of the sand a few meters from the side of the boat. She had dismissed it for only a second before she realized that it wasn't caused by the boats movement. This thing was narrow, and long. Every so often it's movement would weave left and right before straightening out again, like some sort of animal swimming in bursts. Puzzled by the behavior, she failed to react as fast as she would like to when the thing shot out of the sand and struck her.

"Help!" Ellondra wrestled with some sort of worm-like creature. It's head was firmly attached to her right shoulder as it's body whipped around. Seilana rushed over, abandoning her post. When she arrived she saw blood starting to seep through Ellondra's clothes, coloring her shoulder, upper arm, and some of her chest a dirty red. Seilana swung at the worm and cleaved it in two. After a final few movements Ellondra ripped the beast out of her shoulder.

"What was that?" Seilan immediately began to cut and tear Ellondra's clothing to get a look at her wounds. The embarrassment of Seilana taking a look at her was overwhelming. She had only let her mentor Fox look at her before. This was too new, too fast. After a brief struggle Ellondra gave up. Her embarrassment had to take a back seat to her injury.

There were three punctures in her shoulder, and they were deep. They bled steadily, and showed no sign of stopping soon. This was bad. After a haphazard attempt to apply pressure to slow the bleeding Seilana made a dash towards the inside of the boat to look for anything she could use. She came back out with a sparse few things.

"Do you know any magic?" Asked Seilana. Ellondra was suddenly taken back to a forest of oaks. She had fell onto a sturdy branch and stabbed herself. She cried out to her mentor then, and they immediately started treatment. She could only remember one word being spoken. Until today that word was a distant memory, something that she couldn't recall even if she tried. Purt. The word for heal in True Tongue.

She groaned her answer. Seilana had a confused look in her face. After a second she started cutting bits of cotton fabric and sticking it into Ellondra's wounds. Ellondra screamed and fought back. "Let me help you!" Seilana backed off after a small struggle and Ellondra ripped the fabric out of her.

Ellondra put a hand over her wound and focused on shoulder, she tried to clear her mind as much as she could. She thought about the word and shouted it in her mind repeatedly. She finally said it after a minute. "Purt," and her wound stopped bleeding after a few seconds. The flesh began to repair itself bit by bit, and then it stopped. Ellondra, who had been straining to lift her head and arm to tend to her wound let her body fall in exhaustion. The wound was still there, but it no longer bled. It wasn't as deep as before, looking only like small, round, bloody indentations in her skin.

After some more time of falling Voleria seemed to be whole again, and in a normal size. After looking at Ellondra for a moment it put a hand over her shoulder and buzzed low. After just a brief few seconds, the wound was finished healing. Voleria grabbed the two halves of the worm and walked towards Celesta.

Celesta, barely able move around on the floor, had the worm dropped in-front of her. She looked at the worm and then at Voleria.

"What is this?" She spat.

"Food. Energy. Whichever one. You're going to need it." Celesta grabbed the short half and examined it. The flesh looked disgusting and unnatural. Energy it would have to be then. She begun to wither the flesh away, taking whatever fuel and energy it held. After she finished she was able to shakily stand up, assisted by the railing of the boat.

They had finally reached the bottom of the mountain, and to their surprise. There was nothing else. There was only a vast empty blackness. The only thing that betrayed that was the feeling of being watched they all felt.

"You will all die here." Growled a voice from all directions. "You can not possibly defend against us all."