Getting slightly closer to finishing this, thank God. Not that I don't enjoy writing it, which I do, but it would be great to actually finish a book/story for once. I think I should be able to get this finished by November 30th, because that gives me about eight weeks.
Voila! Feast your eyes on the latest chapter of Playing with Fire!
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My eyes opened to darkness. I bolted awake, gasping for breath that didn't want to enter my lungs, reaching out into the black for a sign that everything was alright. The air was chilled, giving me shivers as it brushed against me sweat-soaked skin.
I sank back into the hard wooden chair, still unsure as to where I was. The darkness around me merged with my thoughts and became the dark cell. My eyes were clenched shut, unwilling to stare into the void that confused my mind and muddled my perception.
Images flashed across my eyelids, prompting me into letting out a quiet moan. The pictures just kept coming, getting more and more grotesque and horrendous.
"Reiara?" I flinched at the noise before realizing that the speaker was Hayden. His voice was worried and echoed in the darkness, reflecting the anxious hand on my shoulder. "Are you okay?"
I sat up again, shaking my head as the final dream images floated away. Light flooded my vision as a candle flame burst into existance at my left. Hayden's face was flickering; the light patterns accenting his anxiety.
"Nightmare," I murmured, taking a deep, shuddering breath before speaking once more. "I'll be fine. You didn't have to get up." Hayden settled himself on the chair next to mine, grabbing onto one of my trembling hands and squeezing it in his own large grasp.
"Yeah, I kinda did," he smirked, worry still clear in his icy blue eyes, but his normal demeanor returning. I smiled back at him, shivering yet again when he gave my hand one last squeeze. "Are you going to be alright now?"
My chin bobbed in a nod. I leaned back into the chair, watching Hayden place the candle on the table carefully.
"The Guards are still out there," he commented. "And the sky is still light from sunset. Let's just wait a couple more hours, and then we can go out there and find the old man." I murmured a brief agreement and let my eyes flutter closed, too tired to even say goodnight before I drifted off into dreamland.
* * * * *
Warm light pierced my eyelids, colouring them a bright orange and waking me from my stupor. I groaned and opened my eyes, squinting in the candlelight, to see Hayden hovering over me once again.
"It's dark enough now," he announced, shrugging his backpack onto one shoulder.
My muscles complained as I lifted myself from the chair, still sore from my escapades the other day. Well, I should have been expecting that. I had jumped out a window that was several stories tall, after all.
"Let's go," I whispered, straightening my tunic where it had rolled up during my nap. The first thing I noticed when I pulled my bag onto my back was that it was considerably lighter than it had been earlier. I whipped my head around to see that Hayden's bag was lumpy and deformed, stretched out of shape by a large, chunky object inside.
"I could've taken the Pearl," I muttered. Hayden rolled his eyes, ignoring the comment and opening the door to let me through. We exited the hotel into a dark night, the only light coming from a sliver of a moon that was filtered through the clouds.
Masses of dark red troops tramped through the streets, boots clicking against the cobblestone. The two of us crept across the darkened city, ducking into alleys and behind carts whenever necessary. When we made it to the industrial district, we climbed onto the nearest factory and covered ground through the use of the rooftops.
Finally, the humble little shack came into view. We sprinted past the light of a streetlamp, giving the halo of yellow a wide berth. The door was still as shabby as it had been the last time. Mossy stones glowed orange in the light from the red lantern, water dripping down the outside walls to leave them glistening in a way that was almost magical.
I rapped my knuckles on the door, picking up the same coarse grumble from within. "Great, they've woken me up again. Better have a damn good reason for interrupting me at this hour." Hayden's eyes crinkled in laughter.
The same pair of distrustful brown eyes glared at the two of us from the open door. I gave him a small wave, shaking my hair off to the side so he could see the silver tattoo winding up my cheek and forehead.
"Oh," he grunted, opening the door with a sour expression on his face. "It's you. Don't ya think you could knock on the door when I'm not in the middle of sleep?" We slipped past him into his home, waiting for him to close the door behind us before Hayden dropped his knapsack carefully onto a precariously stacked tower of books.
"We brought you the Sacred Dragon Pearl," Hayden said, crossing his arms. "And Reiara was almost killed in the process." The old man waved it off, crouching down stiffly and opening the folds of Hayden's bag.
"Beautiful," he croaked, holding it up into the flickering candlelight. "Even more special than the paintings of it." He turned to us, eyes wide in appreciation and reverance. "Do you know what kind of metal this is?" His brown eyes flashed to the multicoloured Dragon. "This is Biànzhí, the rarest material in the world. It is any piece of metal that is blessed by every single Dragon, and will only change colours if there is a Dragon Master in proximity." He sighed softly, eyes locked on the statue.
"That's wonderful," Hayden drawled, twin spheres of ice glaring at the old man. "But we're kind of in a hurry here. In case you hadn't noticed, Lee Derran was taken from the Dragon Isles last night and we'd like to find whoever is doing this before he gets..." The old man rolled his eyes, glanced at the Pearl one last time, and then hobbled into an adjoining room.
We waited in tense silence for several minutes before he finally appeared with a scroll clutched tightly in his grizzled hands. He unrolled it carefully, almost caressing it with his fingers as they brushed dust from the paper.
"I believe this is what you were looking for, correct?" His eyes glanced at us slyly before he snapped his head back down to read the scroll. "Said to be the most dangerous information ever to be recorded, the Shāyán de xié'è, or Sandstone of Evil, has been lost for centuries. The exact information it held is unknown, only that it caused death and destruction of massive villages. The ancient sandstone has been reported to be found somewhere in the Black Lake Mountain Range, but the exact location is a mystery. A riddle was found on the base of a goblet, but the information has never been released to anyone except the readers of this scroll. The riddle apparently indicated where the Shāyán de xié'è can be found, but nobody has yet deciphered it:
At the edge of the darkest mirror, on the side where the sphere of light begins its journey
There lies a field of grand proportions, the birthplace of the three eyes
The eyes act like those of a human, sensitive to the same as our own
At the end of one revolution the eyes will stare to an abyss
Through the abyss one must travel, without fear of what may be inside
In the dark there is a light, a glow that leads to an untimely demise
Once past the black, the path is clear
The way is shown if you follow the element of truth
To reach the prize one must pass through the shroud, giving up their comfort to unlock the mysteries
Only when you have felt the pain of millenia may you learn what is offered"
The old man rolled the scroll back up and passed it to me, placing it in my frozen hands. I shook my head to regain my composure and clear the confusion.
"What the hell does that mean?" I sputtered, hands on the smooth fabric of the green tunic that covered my hips. "None of it makes any sense!" The old man shrugged nonchalantly.
"I ain't got no damn idea," he chuckled, settling himslef down on a discarded cushion and opening a leather-bound book. It remained silent save for the sounds of him flipping the crisp yellow pages. He didn't seem to even realize we were still there. Hayden shook his head in frustration. I felt the same as he did, especially when the elderly man turned around and continued reading.
I opened my mouth. "Where is the Black Lake Mountain Range?" The old man ignored the question, and Hayden clenched his fists.
"How do we get there without a Dragon?"
"What does the riddle mean?"
"Did you ever give this information to anyone else?" The old man spun in his seat, then lifted himself much quicker than a man his age should have been able to. His brown eyes seemed sad for a moment, a hidden flicker of devastation. It was gone before I could realize what it meant.
"Only one other," he muttered, not meeting either of our eyes. "A man, maybe thirty-five. He seemed very ambitious, very interested in just what the sandstone instructed. Too interested, really. I never saw his face, he covered it up because of the winter winds, but his eyes were blue and his hair was very dark. The rest of him was covered in fabric. He visited every day, learning more and more about the Shāyán de xié'è and the Black Lake Mountain Range. One day, after two years of coming to my house daily, he disappeared. I never saw him again. He may just be the one you are looking for; he knew more about than anyone besides myself."
I stared in horror at the old man, thinking of someone with bad intentions finding and putting use to the evil practices rumoured to be on the sandstone. Was this mysterious man the one we were looking for?
"Thanks," I murmured, leaving the old man to return to his book. Hayden huffed, seemingly unhappy at the help of the old man, but followed me out the door. The sky was stil dark, and yet the Sacred Dragon Pearl didn't become frigid in the cold night air. Rather, it almost pulsed with an inner warmth.
We walked through the streets until Hayden spotted a few Guards stationed outside a cafe. I ran up to them, dropped the Pearl into the hands of the shortest one, and muttered a quick, "here you go." The surprise on their faces was comic, and as soon as I had sprinted back into the shadows to join Hayden I burst into silent laughter.
"Oh man," Hayden snorted. "Did you see their faces? They certainly weren't expecting that!" I giggled softly, leading Hayden and myself to an unknown destination. I had no idea how we were going to get to the Black Lake Mountains.
I voiced this aloud, waiting for Hayden to come up with something as I tried to solve the problem as well. Finally Hayden snapped his fingers, a sound that reverberated around the small alley we were hiding in and made me grimace as I checked to make sure none had heard.
"We can catch the next wagon travelling there," he said, looking proud of himself for coming up with it. "We learned about them, remember? They bring miners up to the Black Lake Mountain Range, for the rare gems found on the shores of the lakes." I nodded, eyes sparkling as I realized that we still had a chance. Of course, we would have to figure out what that riddle meant...
We kept a steady pace through the city, following the map that showed us the exact location of the wagons. The rooftops kept us away from the Guards and out of sight of the streetlamps. The Sun was just starting to rise as we caught site of them, white tops gleaming like tiny pebbles against a backdrop of dirt roads and green hills. Far beyond them we could see the outlines of snow-capped mountains, silhouetted against the orange and pink sunrise.
"Wow," I breathed, taking a few steps closer as my eyes drank in the beauty of the scene in front of me. Moutains, hills even, were new to me. The closest I'd ever seen to them were the tall islands of the Dragon Isles, but those didn't compare to the majestic range before me.
The Sun peeked over the mountains just as we made it to the wagons. The area was bustling with people, all dressed in rough, dirty garb that came with miners. A tall, lanky man was directing miners to the wagons, checking to make sure they had what they needed.
"Where are your clothes?" he demanded, looking us up and down. "Scratch that. Why do you have a girl with you?" Hayden and I gulped.
"Our father sent us here to punish us and teach us the value of hard work," Hayden explained. The man seemed to accept it, and reached behind him to pull two packages from a table. They contained miners overalls, a few tools and a set of matches.
"Get changed there," he said, pointing to a wooden shack that smelled of manure and sweat. "Then hurry up and get into a wagon. We leave in five minutes." We raced into the shack, facing opposite walls as we slipped out of our usual garments and into the tough fabric of the miners overalls.
The wagons smelled like sweat as well, especially the overweight man that sat extra close to me and leered at me with blackened teeth. Besides him, everyone else pretty much ignored us. We werenèt all that interesting to a group of miners.
When we finally started moving, I leaned out the back to get a view of the city. It was all tall buildings and in the center of it all a massive black and red castle. The Sacred Dragon Pearl was probably in there right now.
"Here we go," I murmured, so quiet that onlt Hayden could hear. "The beginning of another adventure. Let's hope it's a short one." Hayden nodded.
"Let's finish it, soon."
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YAYY!! I finally finished this, and on my birthday! Thank you muse for recognising this! I had the busiest weekend ever, so... yeah. Hop you guys enjoyed, and have fun reading the rest! Once it gets finished, of course. Wish me luck.