The Princess Testing (being rewritten)

Chapter 14*

My eyes fluttered opened not surprised to find a stone wall, but extremely confused.  I don't remember falling asleep, my eyes shifted around the cave.

Finally they landed on a small frame near the entrance, the figure turned around. Jumping a bit as they walked over, "Hello there sleepy head, did you have a nice nap?" Amanda bent down sitting next to me.

"Yes, but when did I?" She shrugged. "Not really sure exactly, I woke and found you sleeping by the entrance." Groaning I slowly stood walking to peer outside.

"How long was I out?" Placing her head against the wall she blew a strand of hair from her face. "I don't know, about three hours at the most." Nodding I looked back outside at the barren waste land.

"How many cannon fires were there?" Leaning on the wall I watched as she counted on her fingers, "In the end I believe there is about thirty six dead. Pretty high number if you ask me."

I agreed with her assessment before urging her that we must get a move on. Within a couple seconds we packed our things and rushed out of the cave.

As we ran I was rather fearful of how quiet it was in the area. Scanning our surroundings my mouth went dry, how on earth is there no one around here.

I would think even with the number of selected left that there would be at least some people in the same place as we were. But as I continued to scan I found no one, just us.

Nudging Amanda a bit we slowed our pace down, "Its rather silent isn't?" She asked as I nodded. "Too silent for my liking." I muttered, while walking all we found was nothing.

Nothing but rocks and sand. No animals of any kind and of course not a single human in sight. The more we walked the more my fear increased.

Had the others already made it to the mountain and we are just late? Or was there something much more sinister a foot? Pressing the questions in the back of my mind I decided it would be better to just focus on the nothingness.

But that was a even worse idea, the nothingness was rather numbing. As we continued to walk my old questions about who was controlling the test began to resurface.

Shaking my head I scowled, I didn't want to think about that at the moment. All I was focused on was at least getting to the mountain and maybe in the mean time we could find Taiga.

Suddenly I was snapped out of my thoughts by Amanda smacking my shoulder, "What?" I asked rather irritated. She looked at me her eyes filled with fear.

She pointed to something in the distant, placing a finger to my lips I began to squint to get a better view. To me to looked like some kind of animal, a dog or a wolf perhaps.

Thank goodness, it would seem that the creature hasn't seen us yet and if we just stayed put until it walks way we should be fine.

But I was focused on the wolf I didn't hear Amanda attempted to back way, but the animal did. Its head moved from the ground straight towards us.

Even from the distant I could hear it awful howl, covering my ears I looked back at Amanda. She was mouthing what I think was I'm sorry, but I had no time for apologies!

Blinking a couple times I noticed the creature was charging towards us, what was even worse was it was staggering meaning it was infected in some way.

Quickly pulling out my sword I transformed it into a gun, aimed, and shot. Hearing a loud  yelp I knew it had made a direct hit. Bitting my lip I just prayed  it was down for the count.

Opening my tightly closed eyes I found the creature only a couple feet from us dead. Now that it was closer I could see it was indeed a wolf. Scrunching my nose up I observed that the patches of skin showing were covered in a mold of some sort, that could only mean one thing.

If that wolf even gave us a small scratch then there is no doubt that within a couple hours we would be probably dead. Letting out the breath of air I was holding I turned back to a shivering Ananda.

"We have to keep going." I stated as she nodded, grabbing her wrist we raced off. Both hoping there was no more creatures sauntering around.