Chapter 7-Amulet and Ring
I was sitting innocently on Anthony’s couch, reading a novel called Percival the Pellasus when two gray things (what the heck were they?) appeared at the opening to the apartment.
“The Council wants you,” one muttered.
“The elder has secret business,” explained the other. “Follow me.”
So I, pretending to be surprised, followed them. Anthony, who was in the laundry room, closed the cap on his Washritor.
“What’s up?” he asked, as the blue ball started to spin.
“Oh, just going on a mission to make the helmets obsolete,” I responded, and left.
The gray beings led me to the Council room. One shoved me in, and I stumbled into someone.
Someone very big.
“Guess why you’re here, Herring,” boomed the thunderous voice of Lucifer. The Council had obviously gotten tired of being small.
“I…got in trouble?” I guessed, pretending, again, not to know.
“Don’t be an idiot, Herring. You think you’re smart, don’t you?”
There was the growing sense of horror that I associated with the feeling that I was about to be punished. “What do you mean?”
“Listening from the bathroom! You underestimated us, Herring!”
They was a bang, and I was thrown into the floor for the second time, my legs bending upward. Pain ricocheted through my spine, but it didn’t mask the impending fear inside me.
“You think we are simply you mortals?” he spat. “Even some of the others heard it! You were moving around in there…spying!”
I would’ve looked him right in the eye, but I wasn’t allowed to. “Why’s it matter? You were going to tell me anyway!”
“It matters,” he said dangerously, sounding like a sensible parent, “because….Would you rather tell someone good news, or have them sneak and hear it themselves?”
“It wouldn’t matter to me,” I said bluntly.
Lucifer yelled out, and I was picked up into the air. I was floating, looking at the ground. I kept my eyes thin, so as not to look at the elder, however tempting it was. I could see, (or perhaps it was just my imagination) however, that there were burning red eyes in the side of my vision. I was thirty feet from the ground, head lowered.
“Listen to me, Herring! You will not defy me! Go on the mission, and I hope you die!”
There was the sound of wind blowing, and he disappeared. I could tell, because all was silent. But then I fell. I managed to turn upright, but still landed hard. It hurt. I felt pain…then confusion. It should have hurt more. Then I turned and saw Merlunius standing there, his hand aloft. He had been casting a spell. As always, he wasn’t angry but had a hard look on his face. Like he had just seen someone fall from a much greater height.
“It’s time to go,” he told me. No ‘are you alright’, just the announcing of my journey to come.
We went out the Council building through Merlunius’s gateway, but all the way neither of us said a word. I tried to ask him about his decision for me to go, but he forestalled me with a warning look.
YOU ARE READING
Samuel Herring: The Curse of Midnight
FantasySamuel Herring doesn't realize that there is another world, in more ways than one. All his life, he has known a cruel caretaker, known only as Daniel Woodrow, at an orphanage that doesn't seem to be quite...legal. He is beaten every week and works t...
