The Orb of Magic

The Orb Of Magic

Written By: Austinerf

Chapter 1 - Confusion

A light patter of water droplets and some scuttling rodents can be heard. The noises seem to echo quite loudly and linger for a while before becoming silent until the next drop of water or the next sudden movement. A quiet muffled scream brings you to your senses. As you slowly become conscious, a damp and stale smell fills your nostrils. You try to peel your eyes open, but they feel heavy and worn out. As you open your eyes, you start to make out your surroundings. You find yourself in what seems to be a huge and empty room, but its hard to tell.

"Where am I?" You become shocked at your own voice, as if you have never heard speech before. You look down at yourself to notice you are wearing a small white vest and some black shorts. Your noticeably revealing clothing makes you shiver as you slowly become cold. As you try to get a bearing of your surroundings one more, you realize that all you can see is the dark stone floor you are sat on and the damp wall you are leaning on, everything else is black, as if there is a thick black fog all around you. The screams from before are heard again, you panic as your first thoughts are pain and agony, but as you notice that they are not screams of pain, but screams of anger, your mind calms itself.

"What the hell is going on here!" you shout, hoping for an answer. No voices call back to you aside from the echo of your own words.

As you realize that you have no idea what is going on, your mind starts to wonder onto different subjects.

"Who am I anyway? I... I don't remember anything". As your mind continues to wonder, you start to believe that you may never find out what has happened to you. After thinking for what felt like a few hours, You become shocked at the thick black fog that surrounds you starting to recede. It takes a few seconds to realize that there is no black fog at all, but rather no form of light. Your eyes start to adjust to the darkness to reveal a dark passage on the other side of the room you are in. Your eyes seem to keep your vision impaired for longer distances, but you shrug it off as you decide to head towards the passage.

You try to stand but instantly fall back down. Your bones are weak and you are exhausted. You feel like you have done a lot of running or have done some sort of exercise with your legs, but your mind ignores the exhaustion as you just want to get out of this place. You try to stand again. This time, you use the wall as leverage to stand. leaning on the damp surface makes you shiver as it is cold to the touch along side the air you are breathing.

After standing still for about a minute, you try to take a step forward. You fall to the ground as your legs give in. You land on your shoulder to try and take the impact. The pain forces you to let out a small shout. "Argh!". You Sigh "That's gonna hurt later". When you try again, balance seems to favor you this time as you find it a lot easier to stand. You feel confident in moving forward, and after two steps, you are sure you are capable of efficiently moving on foot. You slowly make your way over to what seems as the exit that you had seen earlier, but in exhaustion you fall onto the passage way's frame. As you try to gain balance, you start to hear the yells again.

The voices are clearer this time, you try to listen to what they say but can only manage to hear a few words. "Where... it... quickly!" Is all you can make out, the voice sounds extremely desperate and in a hurry. As you stumble on, you try to make out some shapes you see in the corridor, but nothing is recognizable as everything is too far out of your vision, and you don't dare stray from the path you are taking to look at mere structure.

As you move onwards, you realize that you can hear rumbling and tapping like footsteps every so often. It sounds as if someone or something is running around and above you. The sounds seem to be getting louder and closer as you press onwards. After a long while, you start to notice the footsteps getting a lot louder very suddenly. You panic and try to run forwards but stumble and fall down, landing on your knees. You feel you kneecaps vibrate as the direct hit to them trembles your legs. The footsteps sound as if they are right above you as you notice them passing over your head.

You rest for a moment as you believe the sounds have stopped, then the voices can be heard again. "We have to find it quickly, before its too late!" A voice yells. This voice sounded different to the one previous. This makes you come to the fearful conclusion of there being more that one creature above you. As the footsteps carry on ahead, Your conclusion is proved to be somewhat correct as you decipher more that two footsteps. It sounds as if there are about ten people above you.

As you try to rest, you notice a slight bulge in your pocket. You shove your hand into your pocket and pull out what seems to feel smooth and round. You pull the object out and raise it close to your eyes. Your eyes widen as it seems to be a small glass ball encasing some sort of smoke. As you inspect the ball more, you notice that it gives off a small amount of light that seems to pulsate every few seconds. Although a very weak light is being given off, you wonder why you had never noticed this before. As you continue to gawk at the object, a thought worms its way into your head. "What if this is what the voices are after?" you blurt out.

After pondering for a moment, you fear that your mind is correct. The thought of being caught where you rest makes you decide that it's best to keep moving, otherwise you are just a sitting duck. You slip the ball back into your pocket and try to stand. You can't seem to muster the strength up to stand as your legs are still in pain from your crash landing earlier. You need to keep moving, so crawling on all fours will have to do, even if you are leaning on your painful knees.

After what seemed like a few hours, you reach the end of the passage. A thankful sigh releases itself from your lips as you realize you actually getting somewhere. The junction ahead leads a big metal door to the left and a stairway to the right. The stairway only goes down, giving you the conclusion that you are on the top floor. You don't want to stray off of where you think will take you to the exit, so you come to the conclusion that going down the stairs will have to do. You think that going down stairs on all fours is not a very wise decision, but with your legs not letting you walk, your try to make your way down. You move slowly to try and not lose grip, but despite your efforts, you slip and tumble down the stairs."Ow! Oof! Crap!" You heavily fall down the steps, crashing down to the bottom.

As you land at the bottom, you crash into a wall head first. You slump down the rock hard cushion in pain and the fact that you had hit your head making you feel extremely woozy didn't help. You groan in pain at first but after thinking you heard a voice, you try to suppress the noises escaping your mouth. You try to listen closely when a voice speaks out "D'ya guys hear that?". This voice seemed more country like and female, but with pain dwelling in your legs, your mind forgets about what you just thought. You notice that somehow you have cut your leg during the tumble down the stairs. You seem to be bleeding as the cut is quite wide. The blood is warm, which makes you shiver as you realize once again that you are cold.

You hear other voices speaking, but the dizziness in your head restricts you from listening in. During your rest against the wall, questions start to race through your mind as you panic once again. You have no idea how you got here and are just so confused. "Why is this happening?" You whisper. You decide it is best to keep moving on, so you start to crawl forward. A few moments on, you reach a turn in the new corridor you are in. Your mind questions the existence of a small wood panel against a wall. The wood panel seems to be covering a window as a small slit of sunshine is let through.

You try to crawl over to the window, still not believing what your eyes are telling you. Suddenly something dashes past you hitting you in the shoulder. You yelp out in pain and shock as the impact had hit you on the shoulder you landed on earlier. you twist around and tumble over onto your back. You feel something land on top of you with a big thud. As you try to look up, you have a hard time seeing what is above you as the crack of light rests over your eyes. The light is a massive contrast to the darkness you were just in, making vision painful and almost impossible. It is too bright to make out what is above you as you lie there on the floor.

As your eyes start to adjust to the light, you notice that the figure seems to have some form of long, thick poles in place of arms. The creature above you doesn't look anything like a human from what you can see. "Who areaaaAHH" You question is interrupted as the arm-pole thing has come crashing down upon your face. You cover your nose as you feel a blood stream run from your nose down to your mouth. The bitter taste of blood makes you realize that your nose no longer seems to work how it was earlier."What the hell!"

Your scream did not seem to affect the creature above you. You are pinned by what seems like two large stumps on your shoulders."What on earth are you!" the voice yells at you. You remain silent as you are distracted by your previously intact nose. "Where is the Orb?!" The voice yells.

"What? Orb?". You remember the small orb in your pocket, but as you are so confused, you don't even think about taking it out of your pocket. You mind races as more voices close in. All of the sudden events bombards your mind with many questions.

You try to question the being. "Where am I?"

"Shut up! You have the Orb, now give it back!" The being sounds serious. You think about reaching into your pocket and handing this creature the orb, but you fear that you can't move your hands or else it might think you are trying to pull something. "I-I-I" You see the arm thing raise into the air and you assume it is going to strike your face again. You put your arms up over your face in hopes that you can stop the blow. A loud "Gahh!" escapes your mouth as you feel the air leaving your lungs and pain flow through your chest.

You hear the sound of one or maybe two ribs cracking. As you try to gasp for air, you notice you're no longer being pinned down. You use this chance to escape the non-human like being. As you turn and crawl for safety, you slide down onto the floor as the pain is too much. Another being is stood over you. "Whoa there! What the hay!?" That voice is the same country one as before. With the darkness enveloping the creatures and your fuzzy vision, all you can see are four stumps. You try to scramble under the creatures stumps when something presses down on your left leg.

"Tell us where the Orb is or you will regret it pal" A Boyish voice yells. In panic you try to reason with them "Please, I don't know whaaaAAAHHH!". Your leg suddenly cracks due to the pressure added to it. The pain alone almost knocks you unconscious, but you try just manage to pull through due to the adrenaline kicking in. Another voice pursues quickly. "Wait stop! We can reason with it!" You try to look around when you notice the pressure loosen on your broken leg. While The others seem distracted, you slip away from them.

As you notice that your movement is being completely fed off of adrenaline, you crawl forward faster than you have ever done before, but the broken leg seems to be holding you back. At the end of the corridor you scrambled through, you reach the stairs that betrayed you before. You try to look for another way out but you have no luck. With only one way to go, you force yourself upwards. You ignore the pain as you try to climb more and more stairs. On your way up, you slip down a few steps every now and again in panic as you hear the voices yelling.

The stairs seem to go on further than you thought, probably because you are actually climbing them this time. One you finally reach the top, you reach the door you were at before. As you touch the door, you pull back quickly as it's extremely cold to the touch. You push open the door and burst through. A light wind is blowing and a small sigh of relief escapes your mouth as the sun casts light down upon you. You are relieved by the warmth and light as you thought you might never get out of that building.

As you crawl to the edge of the area you seem to have found yourself in, you notice you are on the roof of some sort of tall building. You lose your breath for a second as you didn't expect to be so high up. You almost slip as you look too far off which makes you panic and flinch a little. The quick jolt of your hand slipping makes you jump backwards. As you get back away from the edge you kick your working leg back as you try to get away from the incredible height. When you turn around, you notice something standing in the doorway.

You panic as you know that this is the creature from before. As the figure steps out, you try to make out what this thing really is. Your vision is still quite blurry from the blow to the head when you fell down the stairs. This makes working out what the figure really is, quite a challenge. You notice the figure is an orange with a slight blur of blonde. Out from behind it, two more figures emerge. One is a cyan colour with a colorful mess around it, while the other is a purple with some more darker purple.

You call out "Wait! Please! I don't understand!" The figures seem to ignore you as they walk closer. The creatures seem to walk slowly towards you as if to prolong your pain. Out from the doorway seem to be three more figures you hadn't noticed before. As you try to piece together what these things are, you seem to not notice them right next to you. The Purple one looks directly over you as you cower in front them. "What do you mean?" The question sounded calm and sincere. You try to sit up to project what you are saying but cant muster up enough strength.

"I just woke up here in a dark room, I don't understand what's going on."

"Yea Right" A sarcastic voice speaks out.

"I've had enough! Where is the Orb?!" You stutter in fear as well as the pain that is flowing through you at the moment "I-I-I..." In a quick and smooth action, you see a cyan colored pole-arm thing raise into the air and the come down quickly and heavily upon to your head. You notice the purple being seem to dive towards you, as if to guard you from the attack. "WAIT!" A voice calls out as you slump to the ground. A great ringing in your ear is heard, drowning out all other sounds. Your head rolls onto the ground as your vision begins to fade, the voices become muffled and hard to understand. Your surroundings and the floor you lie on begins to become darker. Everything continues to disappear from your senses as you slowly loose consciousness.