Crunchyfrog
Joined: 12 Dec 2006
Posts: 2242
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 1:05 pm Post subject: Dowsing for Magic |
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Oooh, me first linear post. :-o
This is the first chapter of something I've been working on the past few months, which has progressed from a storygame very close to my heart.
If you find a couple of spare minutes to read this and you like it, please let me know by leaving your mark in the poll. If you don't like it, don't vote. If you want to leave a comment, feel free. If you want to leave a constructive comment and earn fables for it, then follow the link at the end of this post. :-D
Whatever you feel, thanks for reading. :)
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“Wait! Wait!” Morgan slipped down the bank into the shallow stream, his fall ending with a dull splosh. He sank into the silted mud beneath the water, and his boots became stuck fast.
Joe clung like a spider to the bank opposite, anchoring himself on a tangle of protruding tree roots. He extended a hand, his leather knapsack swinging back and forth like a pendulum from his shoulder. Morgan grabbed his arm.
“Come on!” said Joe. “I’m pulling for all I’m worth!”
“Hah! On your wages? Then I’ve got no chance.” Morgan scrambled out of the water, leaving a boot behind. “Raargh!” he growled, and let go to retrieve it from the mud.
Joe sighed. For whatever reason Morgan had been chosen to come with him on this expedition, it wasn’t for his stealth. The man was as clumsy as an ox.
He climbed to the top of the bank, and squinted up through the forest canopy. The springtime leaves barely covered the trees’ slender limbs, offering little shelter from the rain. Joe shivered and he pulled his jacket tighter around his own lean body.
He wiped his dripping nose on his sleeve, and then rummaged in his bag, until he found a metal box that fitted comfortably in the palm of his hand. He opened its hinged brass lid to reveal a dial mounted on a metal stump. A paper-thin brass needle pivoted above it, one end coloured silvery-grey. Joe set the device on the ground, keeping his eye glued to the movement of the needle.
He heard his friend grunting and cursing, clambering up the slope. Morgan sat down with a bump next to him, and Joe looked across at his red face, the thick dark hair surrounding it caked in mud.
“Careful!” he said, shielding the detector with his hand. “You’ll skew the reading.”
“What reading?” said Morgan, shaking water and grit from his boot. “We’ve been searchin’ these woods fer hours an’ if that thing’s to be believed there’s no Emithium ‘ere!”
“Just a bit further. If we finish this area tonight, we can start on the other side of the Hyrst in the morning.”
Joe looked back through the trees towards Stanning. Dusk was already falling, and he imagined the gas street lamps being lit one by one, and the warm, welcoming fires inside the houses in the nearby village, but – much as he longed for a hot bath – he knew there was no refuge for him there. Home was an hour’s bumpy cart-ride further down the valley, in the next town.
Morgan grunted, pulled the boot back on and re-tied the laces. He produced a box of matches from his pocket and grabbed the handle of a small oil lamp protruding from Joe’s knapsack.
Joe swiped Morgan’s hand away. “You fool! D’ya want to get us noticed?”
As he spoke, the pin on Joe’s device stopped spinning and quivered, its sharp end tilting upwards. He exchanged glances with Morgan. This was it! The first time the detector had given a positive reading. Emithium deposits really were close by!
“That way?” he asked, nodding towards the pin.
“Looks like it,” replied Morgan, “’though lookin’ at that lot up there, we won’t be findin’ any Emithium tonight.”
Joe looked at the wall of rock through the trees and tightened his lips. They hadn’t come equipped for scaling cliffs today. “Look, we’re not being paid to bring back Emithium,” he said. “Let’s just get as close as we can and test this…detector. Then we can go home.”
He picked it up and climbed the short rise towards the cliff, Morgan’s heavy footsteps thumping the ground behind him. There, he stared up at the rock face, suppressing a yawn. “Here will do,” he said, dropping his bag on the ground.
“Hang on Joe, the pin’s turnin’. We can get closer!”
Morgan pointed left, further along the rock.
“Wait, we need to be sure...” said Joe. He stayed still, waiting for the needle to settle again, but Morgan was already making his way along the foot of the cliff, beating down and trampling the undergrowth as he went.
“Morgan! Wait!” Joe grabbed his bag. As he hurried after his friend, a strong smell of rotting meat invaded his nostrils, making him gag. He stopped and checked the detector again. The needle had swung towards the rock once more. “Over here!” he said, in between coughs.
Morgan stumbled back towards him, making a face at the smell.
“It’s down there somewhere...” said Joe.
Morgan parted the wet vegetation to reveal a small opening in the rock. Large, shapeless lumps of decomposing flesh littered the ground around it.
He found his matches again and struck one. “Mother o’ God!” Morgan frowned as the dim light played over the remains. “What animal would eat the bones an’ leave the flesh!”
”Don’t know,” said Joe. He held his kerchief over his nose and mouth and crouched down for a closer look. As he passed the detector across the entrance and the needle fluttered. Joe felt a delicious quiver of excitement in his stomach.
“Ouch!” Morgan dropped the match and blew on his fingers. The damp ground extinguished the flame.
“Get another one!” said Joe, his eyes wide.
“Fool. Give me the lamp. We still got to check it’s Emithium that thing’s wavin’ at.”
Morgan lit the oil lamp and pushed it into the hole as far as he could reach. The pair lowered themselves onto their bellies and peered inside, drips of rain showering them as they disturbed the plants around them. The rock within was dry, but there was no sign of the elusive Emithium crystals here.
“Can’t see anything,” said Morgan. “Can you?”
Joe frowned at the pitch darkness beyond the lamp. “It looks like there’s some sort of cavern in there. Push it in further, perhaps we can get a better look...”
Morgan shook his head and lifted himself up onto his hands and knees. Sitting back on his heels he rubbed at his right arm.
Joe looked up. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“My arm… It’s burning…”
Joe peered back into the hole. “Did you touch anything in there?”
“There’s…nothing…in there to touch…” Morgan screwed his face up and bent double, holding his arm to his chest. Without warning he threw his head backwards and screamed, his voice echoing off the rock and repeating through the trees.
“Morgan, be quiet!” Trying to hide them both, Joe grabbed his friend’s coat and pulled him down into the undergrowth, but recoiled in shock as he discovered his hand sinking into his friend’s shoulder… as if it were jelly.
Morgan toppled onto his injured side, choking for breath. Terrified, Joe tried to turn him onto his back.
As he rolled, Morgan’s right side remained adhered to the ground, liquefied, his skin stretching and tearing with a snapping sound. The flesh of his arm oozed through the disintegrating fibres of his clothes. Grey blisters expanded and exploded through the now glutinous skin, ripping holes in it as it melted into the ground. His right eye had gone, dissolved into his face which was transforming into a mass of bubbling blisters.
His left eye swivelled towards Joe and for a moment stared at him in terror, then it glazed over and sank into its collapsing socket, to the sound of ligaments popping as his skeleton crumbled inside him.
Joe retched. He felt his hands burning, and stared down in horror at the small grey blisters appearing on his palms. Filled with panic, he took a few faltering steps backwards before turning to run.
Trees flashed past him as he fled on unsteady legs. The sound of his own blood rushing through his ears deafened him, his throat burned from his rasping breath as he ran.
He’d barely registered the dishevelled man standing in his path before a sudden, blinding light stabbed into his eyes.
Joe staggered on, his brain fooled into thinking he could still see, until he tripped and fell. Robbed of his sight and rigid with fear, his breath came in short, loud gasps.
A heavy weight pressed him into the ground and a voice whispered in his ear.
“Keep still, and you may live yet.”
His muscles shrieked with pain and Joe sank away into unconsciousness.
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