The Elf Thief

Chapter 10: Flight

            It seemed like hours, but when he finally put his feet on the ground again, he just barely caught a glimpse of purple light, and a flash of silver as the elf girl’s moonhawk feather caught in the moonlight. He raced after them.

            Dearekk followed close behind the violet light, but the elf girl was so intrigued with the butterfly that she seemed not to notice them. Then something hit Dearekk, he knew every inch of the castle like the back of his hand, and where the butterfly was leading them was nowhere near a way out. He opened his mouth to tell the girl, but it was at that moment he realized that he never asked for her name.

            The elf girl and he stopped when they noticed that only the huge castle wall lay in front of them. But the butterfly didn’t. It flew strait into the wall, and passed though it as though it was nothing more than an illusion.

 Suppressing a yelp, both of them raced to where the butterfly had been only a moment before. The outline of the creature seemed to be etched into the wall along with some other runes; they were all glowing.

The elf girl raised her hand to touch the runes. “Love. And some sort of…test,” she turned to look at him, “I’m not sure what they mean. It’s not in any language I know.” Suddenly her head jerked around, fear reigniting in her eyes. “I can hear them!” she whispered urgently. “They are coming!”

But Dearekk seemed to be hypnotized by the outline of the butterfly. It was not only glowing, but also pulsing with a slow and steady beat. “I wonder if…” his voice trailed off as he raised finger, and gently pressed the center of the butterfly’s body. To his surprise, it pushed in a good inch and suddenly part of the ground underneath the elf girl’s feet fell away.

She let out a yelp and reeled on the edge, trying desperately not to fall on the sharp spikes that awaited directly below. Snapping out of his daze, Dearekk reached out and pulled her back right before she fell forward.

“Are you alright?” he asked, surprised at how concerned he sounded.

She shot him a glare that could kill. “Yeah, I’m fine,” her voice laced with sarcasm. “Nothing like a near death experience to keep you on your toes.”

He looked down into the pit, and saw a small branch leading off into another section. This had to be a tunnel. But how could someone get to the tunnel when there was nothing but spears blocking the entrance.

Shouting in the distance grew louder as the Quarries must have heard the elf girl’s cry. Desperately, Dearekk’s eyes searched for an escape, something he missed that would allow them to survive this night.

“There!” he whispered and raised his hand to point at a small section among the deadly barbs. “See how there is no spikes right there? If you jump right there you should be able to maneuver around the rest of them deeper into the tunnel. You go, and I’ll follow.”

She stared at him incredulously. “I’ll go? Sure, I’ll do the death-defying stunt while you sit up here and watch! Sounds great!”

“Will you just trust me?” he hissed back. Why was this girl blocking him at every turn? Couldn’t she just cooperate for one moment?

“Trust you?” she let out a short bark of laughter, bordering on hysteria. “Trust you? I don’t even know your name!”

Dearekk let out a growl of frustration; he could hear the Quarries getting closer. Grabbing the elf girl by her shoulders, he made her look into his eyes, grey meeting green. “If the Quarries see you, then the will kill you on sight. If they see me, they will hesitate, not knowing what to do. Why don’t you see that I don’t want you get you killed?!”

That seemed to calm the girl down quite a bit. She still shook a little bit as she gazed down into the dark pit, but before he knew what was happening she had jumped down, and lithely landed between the spikes. Unexpectedly the ground began to move, and the opening to the pit began to close itself.

Dearekk glanced in the direction of the Quarries voices. Its not to late, a voice in his head told him. You could claim you were enchanted, forced to free them against your will…  The idea was tempting, to be sure. But a something told him that even if the King believed him, nothing would ever be the same.

So he jumped into the unknown abyss missing his aim by a little bit and cutting his arm on a razor sharp spike.  The top sealed itself shut, leaving him in complete darkness, with only an elf girl, whose name he still did not know, and the doubts already accumulating in his mind, calling him a fool for leaving.

(A/N Oh! And by the way, sorry about the title. It is really similar to "Jail Break" but I originally made this chapter and the next the same one. I realized that the next chapter would be way too long if I kept them combined, so I split them up, and I didn't really know what to call this one. The "Flight" refers to to Dearekk and Sonya fleeing. It was never meant to mean flight as in flying. Sorry if you misunderstood that. :] )