Master of None

by Dalken Starbyne

Dear Journal - Today I Was Kidnapped (Chapter 4)

I groaned as the world came back to me. Darkness parted from my vision, and I saw the raging fire of the balloon caught in the trees above me, though the rain from the storm was doing its best to douse the spread. It felt almost like a dream. I fought to recall where I was and why.

Rolling over, I saw the balloon basket turned over on the ground. Right. Pyra and I were flying to Fillydelphia. And then the storm hit. I recalled the pilot trying to hide his terror at the size of the unexpected storm. How could everything have gone so wrong?

I crawled over to the basket to see if the pilot was still inside. I didn’t have to lift it up to check. I could see his brown leg protruding from beneath the corner of the basket. It sat at an unnatural angle, and the side of the basket was stained red where a branch had pierced it. I winced; there was too much. It was too late for me to do anything for him.

I could only hope that Pyra had managed to survive the fall as I had. I went to stand up, but my right ankle and the lower leg attached to it refused to support my weight. I totally didn’t scream when I tried to stand on it. I also absolutely did not cry while reeling from the pain, either.

When I had recovered enough to gather my senses, I called out Pyra’s name, but I heard no response. I tried again. Still nothing.

I was on my own.

Based on the spread of branches around me and the bruising all over, I guessed the trees had slowed my fall. I was glad they were so tall and spindly, otherwise I might’ve broken in half when I came down. Worming my way through the wet grass, I grabbed as much extra rope from the balloon basket as I could, cutting it free with a sharp stone I found nearby, and then I tucked all of it and a bundle of branches together into my arm before crawling away from the crash site as quickly as I could. The fire came crashing down behind me moments later. It was far too close for comfort.

Once I was away, I used several sticks and a portion of rope to frame up my ankle into a splint. I was suddenly very grateful for the wilderness survival trips we’d taken in 5th grade, even if I had come down with a flu and missed one, but it was still really hard to work at that angle. After I’d finished securing the splint as best I could, I used much of the remaining rope to tie a few larger branches together as a crutch, wrapping the extra around the top to use as a poor man’s cushion. It wasn’t what I’d have called comfortable, but it gave me a good grip.

With my leg splinted and my crutch assembled, I managed to get myself upright. I was slow, but at least I was mobile. I began hobbling around the perimeter of the crash site, calling out for Pyra, but still there was no response. And despite the downpour of rain, the fire was beginning to spread. I had to get some distance before I burned alive. I kept calling for Pyra as I made my way toward the nearby mountains. I hoped I could find shelter there. A cave or something, maybe.

Just then, I heard a loud pop echo from somewhere off to my right. I looked up and saw a shower of red sparks, followed by a crackling of fireworks muted by the wind and rain. I hurried my way towards it at the fastest hobble I could muster.

“Pyra!” I shouted over the wind and rain. I could barely even hear myself, but I had to keep trying. “Do that again! I’m coming!”

Blue sparkles exploded into the air. Not far now. I practically launched myself with every step, almost losing my balance several times. My splint started to come loose, but I didn’t care. I just had to get to Pyra.

There. I could see a splash of red and orange through the woods ahead of me. She was being accosted by some kind of shadow, and I could make out voices shouting as I got closer.

“Give us the sky gems, pony!” Said one, somehow shrill and gravelly all at once.

Another, this one somewhat deeper. “Yes, gems!” Was Pyra being attacked by goblins? Did they have goblins here? They had magic. I wasn’t going to rule it out.

I also didn’t wait to see what, exactly, it was. As soon as I was in range, I put all of my weight on my good leg and swung my crutch as hard as I could at one of the shadows accosting my friend. The wood cracked against the skull of whatever it was, and the creature crumpled to the ground. I swung myself out from behind a nearby tree to get a better view of the scene.

Aside from the one I’d just accosted, there were three more creatures surrounding Pyra. They looked, by all accounts, not entirely unlike dogs. They even wore collars. But they also wore sparse clothing, vests mostly, walked upright, and had massive, clawed hands where their front paws ought to have been. Their tails appeared vicious, but I wasn’t sure if they could be used as weapons or just especially mangy. The two were not mutually exclusive, I concluded.

Taking advantage of my distraction, Pyra bucked one of the canid creatures in the face. It reeled back, grabbing its muzzle and yowling in pain before it fell over. I grabbed a branch on the nearby tree to support my weight as I chucked my broken crutch at one of the other two remaining. I missed, but it gave Pyra an opening, and she took it, launching the dog-thing a few feet into the air with another well-placed buck. It landed on the ground in a heap. The last of them upended itself and burrowed into the ground almost faster than I could blink.

I panted and checked around for any more of them. When I was satisfied that we’d dispatched them for the time being, I looked to Pyra with concern. “You okay?”

She returned my expression in kind. “I’m not the one with a busted leg,” she remarked. I felt the rope from my splint tighten as she took my leg in her telekinesis and re-tied it much tighter than I was able to manage on my own. With her help, I was able to find a new branch to repair my crutch with as well. She examined the dog creatures for a moment before looking around. “Where’s the pilot?”

My face told her everything she needed to know. Her ears drew back.

“We should get out of here before that thing comes back with friends,” I said. I began hobbling toward the mountain once again.

Pyra nodded her agreement as she moved with me. “Diamond dogs,” she replied. “They usually keep to themselves, but if they think you have something they want, they can be very aggressive.”

“Oh. Great,” I replied. I shook out my coat, which had taken surprisingly little damage considering what we’d just been through. Still, it had definitely seen better days, days when it wasn’t scratched up and covered in mud, grass, and soot. My compass fell out of one of the pockets. The plastic lid was cracked. I sighed and opened it, expecting the face to be shattered.

It was not. The case had done its job protecting the equipment inside. Moreover, the magnetic face was not spinning around wildly. “Hey, uh,” I started, holding up the compass experimentally to be sure it was in fact still working correctly. “About what direction is Fillydelphia from here?”

“East, I think. Past the mountains. I saw the rail line not far from here, south I think,” Pyra replied, pointing. “Why?”

~*~*~*~*~*~

We walked for hours. With my leg the way it was, we moved at an agonizingly slow pace. Worse, we didn’t know exactly how far Fillydelphia actually was. Any maps our former pilot may have had went up in flames with the balloon. However, eventually, we did find the rail line Pyra had mentioned, and the rain had let up as well. There was hope.

“I don’t suppose...there are any smaller towns...on the way in...to Fillydelphia,” I said between hops on my crutch.

Pyra shook her head. “Dunno,” she replied. “Sorry.”

I took in a breath and pointed at a large rock up ahead. “I need to stop again. You mind?”

Again, Pyra shook her head. We made our way to the rock and I sat down on it.

I hiked my pant leg up to inspect my ankle. I was no doctor, but from how ugly and swollen it was, I suspected it wasn’t just sprained. Also, it still hurt. A lot.

“Is it supposed to be that color?” Pyra asked. It was my turn to shake my head, and she frowned. “We need to get you to a doctor,” she said.

I couldn’t argue with her. This was a tad more serious than a few scratches; although, I had acquired plenty more of those, too. I did my best to shuffle my pant leg back down so the rough sticks making up my splint wouldn’t scrape at my leg, and then I removed my water bottle from my belt to take a pull from it. It was a bit dinged up, but the aluminum had proven sturdy enough to keep it from puncturing during my plummet of doom. There wasn’t much water left inside. Between the two of us, and how much I had been exerting myself just to get anywhere on my crutch, it had emptied fairly quickly.

I offered the last of it to Pyra, who pushed it back at me with a scowl once she realized how low it was. “You’re hurt, Jack. You need that more than me,” she insisted.

“And if I’m gonna make it to a hospital, I’m gonna need your help,” I replied, shoving it right back at her.

Pyra sighed and, making it entirely clear with every ounce of her body language that she disapproved, finally relented before drinking up the last of the bottle. She made a point of clipping it aggressively back onto my belt.

After doing my best to avoid Pyra’s glaring, I pulled out my binoculars and scanned the horizon. The rail line was at the edge of the woodland, though I thought I could see the border of another forest some distance to the south and east. There was also another tall mountain a long way almost directly south, but the rest just appeared to be plains. I couldn’t see anything in the intervening hills that indicated signs of civilization beyond the rail line itself. I put my binoculars away.

“Doesn’t look like there’s anything out there. We’ll just have to keep walking,” I said, stowing my binoculars and pushing myself up onto my crutch. I looked to Pyra.

Or, at least, I looked to where she was.

I scanned the area. “Okay, very funny, Pyra. You can come out now.”

I was met with only the whistling of the wind. Even the birds had stopped chirping.

I cupped my free hand to my mouth as I called out again. “Pyra?” I started to make my way around the boulder. I absolutely was not afraid of being left alone or anything, but I was beginning to worry for my friend. “Joke’s over. This is n--”

I was cut off as I tripped over something. I lost hold of my crutch on the way down, and it was all I could do to brace myself for the impact. Brushing myself off, I turned over to find where my crutch had fallen, as well as look at what I’d tripped over.

I saw my crutch standing upright in a loose pile of dirt.

I leaned over to grab it, but it refused to budge. I tried to wiggle it free. Nothing. I put both hands on and tugged with all my might. Still nothing. I leaned myself back as I pulled to get better leverage, but the crutch remained steadfast. What the heck had I gotten it stuck in? Certainly not just some dirt. I let go to crawl around and see if I could get a better angle on it, or even dig the thing out, but almost as soon as I did, it disappeared into the ground before my eyes.

I stared at the patch of dirt where my crutch had been, dumbfounded. Without my crutch, I couldn’t even hope to look for Pyra, much less continue on to Fillydelphia on my own. I had to get it back.

I began digging.

All I had available was my bare hands, but the loose dirt gave way easily enough. I’d gotten a few inches in when I felt a sudden tug on my forearm. Like my crutch before it, my arm had embedded itself in the dirt and refused to come back out.

I did not like where this was going.

But I was calm. Collected. On top of my game. I did not panic. And I certainly did not flail about trying desperately to yank, pull, and push my arm free from the mysterious force that had latched onto me.

Okay, fine. Maybe I did.

A little.

As I was attempting to extract myself, the force pulled the rest of me under. In an instant, all light had gone, and my first priority suddenly became holding on to what breath I had in that moment as the earth swallowed me whole.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to hold my breath for long. I emerged into a tunnel, though I only knew as much from feeling the dirt fall away. All was pitch black. That didn’t seem to matter to whatever was dragging me through the tunnel, though, and as I attempted to find any further clues as to my surroundings, I felt something hard strike my head.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When I came to, I could smell the mineral dampness of a cave. I was also vaguely aware of the orange, flickering glow of torchlight. I attempted to push myself off the floor, but a hoof met my chest.

“Easy there, Jack,” I heard a voice say.

It was Pyra’s.

I did my best to push the disorientation away. Everything was still fuzzy. No doctor was I, but I would not have been surprised to discover I had a concussion.

I opened my eyes properly to see Pyra staring at me, brushing the dirt out of my hair. I was covered in the stuff, and so was she. Behind her, I saw a set of iron bars set into a surrounding wall of solid stone. We were in a cell, and a crude one at that.

“What--” I croaked, and I shooed the frog away from my throat with a cough. “What happened?”

“They caught up with us,” Pyra explained, helping me sit up enough to find a wall to lean myself against. “The diamond dogs. They brought us here.”

“Wherever ‘here’ is,” I replied. Pyra nodded. I leaned my head back against the wall and sighed.

This was not my week.

I sat there for a while, mulling over just how I’d gotten myself into this situation. I found it hard to believe this had all started with nothing more than a simple walk in the woods, and I had to wonder what Christie would think of the whole situation. ‘It’s real weird,’ she’d probably have said. ‘But you always did want to go on an adventure. Here’s your chance. Take it.’ I liked my life before, but she would have been right, and I supposed I didn’t have much choice at this point anyway. And if I was going to be on an adventure, I sure wasn’t going to die in some dingy old dungeon.

Pyra, meanwhile, had apparently taken it upon herself to examine the locking mechanism keeping us in here. Like the rest of the cell, it was a simple affair, but effective. A large, iron lock built into the door. It looked a bit rusty, but Pyra assured me she had already tried to kick it free. Naturally, it hadn’t budged. We would either need the key, or some way to pick or destroy the lock. I learned then that unicorn magic apparently did in fact have its own rules; Pyra couldn’t just melt the lock. Her magic, at least if it was more complicated than telekinesis, could only produce effects specifically tailored to the creation and exhibition of pyrotechnic displays. As such, anything that would have been hot enough to get us out would also have been big enough to cause other problems.

Having narrowly avoided burning alive just hours earlier, I was not terribly enthused by the idea.

“These diamond dogs,” I said. Pyra paused her inspection of the door to glance back at me. “They thought your fireworks were gemstones? They don’t sound terribly bright.”

She shook her head.

“I might have an idea,” I continued, and Pyra quirked a brow at me.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Help! Please! I don’t think he’s breathing!”

Pyra’s voice resounded throughout the tunnel system, and it was not terribly long before I heard footsteps pad up to the door of our cell.

“What do you want, pony? We’re busy!” My eyes were closed, what with my playing dead and all, but that didn’t stop the grating voice of one of our captors from stabbing my poor eardrums.

“Please,” Pyra’s voice countered. I hadn’t ever thought her voice to be displeasing by any measure, but compared to the diamond dog’s, it was as heavenly a sound I’d ever heard. “He’s stopped breathing. Please help!”

There was a brief pause. I unconsciously gripped a loose rock I’d grabbed earlier a little tighter than I meant to. Then I heard the sound of a heavy lock unlatching and the squeal of ancient metal hinges. The footsteps padded closer, and then I stilled my breath as I felt a weight on my chest.

“Yes,” the voice said. It didn’t sound terribly concerned about my well-being (or lack thereof). “He dead.”

I inched an eye open to see the diamond dog’s head turned toward Pyra, his paw on my chest. Immediately, I swung my hand up to bring the rock to his skull with as much force as I could muster. He yelped and fell sideways, and I swung again. At the second impact, he fell still. Turned onto my side, my raised arm shook with the rush of adrenaline, ready to strike a third time, but my perceptions caught up with my instincts, and I dropped my arm and the rock to the floor. I didn’t pause to check his condition. Instead, I grabbed the crutch they’d so helpfully tossed into the cell with us and promptly made my way with Pyra out into the dungeon. She looked at me askance, but I was more concerned with finding a way out of here.

It was a maze. I realized immediately that I had no idea which way to go. Beyond this room, which held several more cells but little else, the tunnels all looked largely the same. Though as I scanned further, I did notice one other item of interest.

A minecart on a set of rails.

I hobbled over to it and tested it. Despite its otherwise decrepit appearance, the wheels still ran (mostly) smoothly. There were a few loose gemstones inside that were rather shockingly large to my eye. At the moment, however, I was much more interested in the cart itself. Hoisting myself on my crutch, I swung myself into my newly acquired vehicle. I looked to Pyra and grinned. “Hop in.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Riding in a minecart was a lot less awesome and a lot more uncomfortable than TV and video games had led me to believe. Despite the bumps and bruises however, it was still much faster than if I had been trying to make my way by foot. I used my crutch to push the cart along, which kept us going at a significantly more consistent pace than my previous hobbling through the woods. The tracks gave us a direction to follow, and I had to hope they actually led somewhere, particularly because I was getting tired. I kept half expecting to suddenly come across a dip in the tracks that would turn our ride into a terrifying makeshift roller coaster. As time passed, the torches quickly gave way to the dimmer illumination of walls studded with huge, glowing gems, even bigger than those that sat in the cart with Pyra and me. I might have stopped to appreciate how beautiful it was if I wasn’t also terrified of being recaptured by the diamond dogs.

Much to the chagrin of my aching arms (and the relief of my inner pragmatist), much of the tunnel was either level or a steady uphill climb. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when we reached the end of the tunnel, but I was elated to discover that there was, in fact, an end in sight. Sunlight spilled in through the opening, overpowering the glow of the gemstones. As I pushed the cart through and the sky reached out above us, I saw that there was hardly any trace of the storm left save for some dampness in the grass outside the entrance to the mine.

Pyra caught my attention as she bounced a bit in my lap. I winced as the motion bumped my ankle into the side of the cart, and she gave me a look of apology before directing my gaze to our right. Buildings! There was a small town not far from the mine. I couldn’t resist the urge to hug her, though once I realized what I’d done, I broke the embrace with a blush, even if she had hugged me back. We exchanged a pair of sheepish grins, and with Pyra’s help, I climbed out of the cart.

Author's Note:

Sorry it took so long for this update. I promised myself I wouldn't let this slip and promptly proceeded to fail. Long story short, life ate my face. Can't promise it won't happen again, but I'm going to do my best to keep at it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy!