Starfire

Chapter 15: -A Not-So-Daring Escape-

   The sudden, jarring sound of a shout woke Najma, but he was quick to realize that it wasn't just a singular outburst. An argument had broken out somewhere nearby, though obviously not in the same room as him. It was muffled by walls.

He was in the dark, lying against a cool metal surface that had been warmed by his body.

Someone must have thrown something, or something must have fallen, because there was a very loud crash on the other side of the wall against which he had been propped. He jerked, and that was when he discovered that his hands and feet were tightly bound, and that the ties on both had been lashed tightly together in front of him, so that he could hardly move at all, much less hope for an escape. There was a gag in his mouth, but for what reason, he couldn't imagine. It wasn't like he'd try to talk his way out of a dark room.

It took much longer for him realize that they had taken the braces from his legs. Even if he was able to get out of his ties and escape the room they held him in, he wouldn't be able to walk. Or, more importantly, run.

His nose still throbbed and he could feel a sore lump forming where the final blow had struck near his temple. By the crusted feel of his face, he knew that the blood hadn't been cleaned off, and consequently, that the wound had bled.

There was an obvious and very quick solution that his captors clearly didn't know about: He was a Shapeshifter.

With no other immediate ideas, he took the form of a pixie-like alien that he had seen in passing while he worked the gardens just hours before his kidnapping—how long ago that had been, he couldn't be sure. Neither could he remember what it the thing was really called, but he must have once learned about it, because the shift was instinctually easy, as if he had practiced long ago.

But now that he was out of his ties, and sore due to both cramping and Shifting, he wasn't sure how to proceed.

There was the issue of being unable to walk, and he knew of at least one form in which his legs were still useable without the braces, but it was foolish to try a form as large as a Yu-Liang without knowing how much space he had. Though it was endlessly tempting, he fought the itch to give in and return to his original shape. He had to be smart.

The walls muffled the argument in the other room just enough that he couldn't understand what his captors were saying, but he could hear enough to know that they weren't going to notice if he rattled around a bit in his cage.

He started to feel his way around, with the hopes that, if he knew where he was, and more specifically, how big the room was, he could escape.

On either side of him, his outstretched hands immediately struck the cool metal walls. He was already leaning against one wall, and although he couldn't feel anything beyond his extended legs, he knew the last one couldn't be too far off. He definitely would have regretted Shifting.

He began to drag himself forward, just to be safe, and as he'd suspected, he met the last wall almost immediately; it was less than a yard ahead of where his feet had just been resting. Now that he knew how much space he had to work with, horizontally, the next step was a bit trickier.

He pushed his hands against the two walls, grateful that they were so close together even as he wished bitterly that they weren't, then he lifted himself up. His legs wouldn't respond to any attempts to move them, but he could still use them as a very unreliable support while he clawed his way up the wall. In the darkness, the only thing to remind him that he even had legs at all was the dull pressure, and the fact that he had not fallen.

He carefully propped himself into the corner of the room tiny room, and as soon as he was sure he wouldn't immediately topple, he removed his hands from the walls and lifted them above his head. He couldn't feel the ceiling, no matter how far he stretched, nor how far to either side he probed.