New Chapter
Chapter Three
Warning: Some violence (blood)
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Rolling over, Shawn smashed his hand against the alarm clock on the floor, turning off the obnoxiously loud alarm. It had to be obnoxiously loud for him to hear it, but even still Shawn had problems getting up. Mornings really weren’t his friends, particularly not when he had to go to classes. Even though none of his classes started until ten: it was still too early. Ten minutes after the alarm went off Shawn finally dragged himself from bed and into the kitchen to eat. Grabbing a Pop-tart from the pantry, he noticed the lamp still sitting on the counter.
“Going to have to find a place to put you…when I unpack,” Shawn muttered, casting a cynical eye over the boxes he had brought. It hadn’t seemed like there were that many until he had piled them all into the apartment. Then his eyes fell on the clock. “s**t! I’m going to be late!” Stuffing the two, half-eaten Pop-tarts into his mouth, Shawn seized his backpack (one of the few other things he had unpacked) and dashed out the door. Bolting down the metal stairs, Shawn jumped the last few steps and nearly landed on his bike, which was chained to the stairs. Fumblingly, he managed to get the bike-lock undone and shot off across the still empty parking lot. No car had appeared, but this morning he didn’t care. He had been an idiot to think anything would happen. Least Ryan hadn’t been there to laugh at him.
Wheeling out of the apartment complex, Shawn zoomed along the sidewalks towards the campus. He kept checking his watch anxiously and it was at one of the points when he was looking down that his bike suddenly hit something. Both Shawn and the bike were pitched forward, Shawn flying straight over the handlebars while the bike crashed into the ground with a spray of water. Shawn hit the ground a moment later, his hands thrown up to protect his head. He skidded across the concrete a short way, ripping up his arm and shoulder in the process, before coming to a halt.
“Ow..s**t!” He groaned, rolling over gingerly. Wincing, he sat up carefully, automatically clutching at his bleeding arm. Nothing felt broken, but he definitely was going to have scabs and bruises across his left side. He checked his arm, wincing again as he noticed from the elbow up had been ripped up by the concrete. “No stitches, please,” he muttered. Thankfully, the damage seemed minor, just bloody. After reassuring himself that no bones were popping through his skin (which it honestly felt like), Shawn turned to see what had caught his bike.
“What the hell…?” he said quietly, staring with an open mouth. His bike was lying in a stream! A stream cut straight across the sidewalk and, as Shawn noticed when he turned his head, straight out into the street. He had hit the rocks lying around the edge of the stream, jamming the bike tires and sending him flying. Shawn cautiously rose to his feet and walked towards the stream. It looked and sounded like real running water, but he still bent down and poked it using the tips of his fingers.
Shaking water from his hand, he straightened up. “Where the hell did this come from?” It definitely hadn’t been there yesterday, going or coming from the campus. Dragging his bike form the stream, Shawn looked towards the street, where the stream cut across the road. It was unusually empty, even so late in the morning. That road was normally pretty busy, being one of the main streets in the town. Frowning, Shawn turned towards the opposite direction, noticing that the stream disappeared around some trees. He hesitated for a moment, but the decision was already made. He was following the magically-appeared stream. He could stand to miss one Earth Science class. Holding onto the handlebars, Shawn pushed his bike through the trees and bushes lining the sidewalk.
Keeping as close as he could to the stream without walking into it, Shawn headed further into the woods. At first he had been surprised that the trees didn’t back up to a neighborhood or a shopping center, since he wasn’t exactly on the edge of town, but they kept going like a proper forest. The stream chuckled along merrily, winding its way along like it had been doing this forever and not just in the last twenty-four hours. Shawn felt tense and sore, his eyes straining for anything unusual in the very normal looking forest. After ten minutes of pure walking, and nothing interesting popping up, he started contemplating turning around. Maybe some ditch had overflowed during the night and made the stream? But that wouldn’t explain why it was cut into the ground, and not just flowing over the leaves. Then his bike snagged on yet another bush.
Grunting, Shawn hauled roughly on the handlebars. “Damn bike! Damn bush! Come here!” He pulled backwards, taking a step back as he did. Instantly, his body froze up, his arms locking and his fingers clamping down on the handlebars. Panicked, Shawn tried to look around before realizing his neck wouldn’t move either. With his mouth stuck half-open, he was still able to produce some noise. In this case, it was a scream of terror. He couldn’t move! He couldn’t move! It was like he had suddenly become a statue. Everything was frozen in place, except for his eyes which were darting around wildly. About to go into a full-blown panic attack, Shawn suddenly latched onto the fact that his right leg could move.
He wasn’t paralyzed, thank god! Almost crying with relief, Shawn strained to look downwards. He could move his entire right leg from the knee downwards. He swung his foot back and forth, trying to figure out what was paralyzing him. As he did so, he became aware of small lights creeping out from the foliage around him. Shawn nearly popped his eyes from their sockets in his attempt to look around at the lights. They looked like large, multicolored fireflies. For a moment, he forgot his predicament to stare at the lights as they began to circle around his head. The lights twinkled and glittered, slowly revolving around his body in a hypnotizing way. His leg, the only part he could still really control, relaxed as the panic receded from his mind. A feeling of peace washed over Shawn, filling him with a warm glow. Placidly, he stared at the lights, his eyes beginning to droop.
As Shawn became more and more tired, the lights moved closer and closer until they were hardly an inch from his body. If he had been thinking clearly, he would’ve noticed small figures inside the lights. They were dancing, weaving a hypnotic spell over him. Shawn began humming lazily, providing music for the little dancing creatures. He shifted his right foot to give himself better balance and his shoe crushed a mushroom on the ground. Instantly, Shawn regained feeling and control in his body at the same moment the sleepiness disappeared. The lights flared with an angry light, hissing as they broke their circle and zoomed around Shawn. One of the lights, a burning purple one, shot towards Shawn’s face. He screamed and stumbled backwards, leaping out of the ring of mushrooms he had been standing in. His bike crashed to the ground as he took off running.
The lights pursued Shawn angrily, zipping easily around trees and branches. Shawn was running flat out, shoving branches out of his way and leaping over bushes and other obstacles. He had no idea where he was going or what he was running from. He just knew he didn’t want those lights to catch up with him. Leaves and dirt shot out from beneath his feet as he bolted through the trees, hardly daring to glance back to see how close those lights were. Slowly, the lights fell back then disappeared as Shawn continued sprinting. He was just beginning to slow down and look around when a large shape suddenly loomed out in front of him, emerging from the shadows
Shawn screamed in surprise as he stumbled backwards. The scream was rather soft, as he still didn’t entirely have his breath back from all that running, but it was still a scream. His foot slipped out from beneath him and he crashed to the ground with a gasp. The dark shape leapt forward and, with a thrill of horror, Shawn felt cold metal press dangerously against his neck as his arms were pinned.
“Don’t move!” snarled a rough voice. “Or I’ll slice your throat!” Terrified, Shawn squeezed his eyes shut, praying that the end would be quick. First paralyzed by some weird lights, and now about to killed by some dark shape. His life just plain sucked. The metal, a blade he realized with even more horror, nicked his skin. “Open your eyes!” the voice ordered. Slowly, Shawn opened his eyes a mere sliver. They opened fully from surprise when he saw a face only inches from his own.
Unable to move, Shawn was forced to stare back into a pair of large, incredibly dark eyes. They were almond-shaped and lacked any white, except for a thin ring at the very edges. But despite the rough voice and the blade as his throat, he thought the eyes looked gentle…in a tough sort of way. He couldn’t see much else besides the eyes and a fuzzy ring of brown above said eyes. They appeared intently back at Shawn, who was afraid to shut his eyes again in case he was stabbed. Just as his eyes were beginning to water, the blade was suddenly removed and the person retreated, releasing Shawn’s arms.
“Sorry about that, Friend,” said the person, their voice suddenly much less rougher and considerably nicer. “Can’t be too careful in these woods though, eh?”
Shakily, Shawn sat up and looked towards the speaker. A woman smiled back at him, stowing a long knife into her belt. Her long chocolate brown hair fell down her back and across her round, friendly face and her dark eyes were now staring at Shawn brightly. She looked fairly normal except for her clothes, which Shawn thought seemed like a bad Renaissance Fair costume. The woman had on light colored jeans, which were rolled up over shin-high leather boots. The belt she had stashed the knife in also had a sword strapped to it on one side with a large pouch attached to the other. Her top was a pale blue blouse with puffy sleeves and laced loosely in the front. She had on a black vest with silver designs over that, and which looked like something that came from a vintage store. A red cloth was tied around her right thigh.
For a moment, Shawn stared at the woman, eyeing the sword at her hip. However, she seemed to have no interest in drawing it and was rather watching him earnestly, a smile hovering on her round lips. She seemed to be waiting for Shawn to speak but as the silence stretched between them, she spoke up first. “So, what were you running from, Friend? I hope nothing’s coming towards us? That would be a rather nice thing for me to know.”
She looked to Shawn questioningly, who was struggling to find his voice. He didn’t know who this woman was, where she had come from, or why she had a sword. Who carried around a sword these days? Prying open his mouth, Shawn meant to reply, but instead his tongue seemed to take a life of its own. “Umm, who are you?”
