Part Ten: Suspended Moment & Questioned Truths

As we scramble up this crevassed slope, the blackest soldiers of hatred and vengeance scream after us, their roars and high pitched wailing strikes terror to my legs, but we can see the sky a few feet head up the steep edge of rock and ground.

Fighting and clawing with pain staking need to reach the top, Cook and myself push our physical limits through fear and terror and as I reach over the top, still struggling to get out the crusty ground breaks at Cook’s feet and he slides downward. “Cook!” I scream, now fighting to clamber up the edge of the crevasse opening without any stable ground as footing. My heart beat is violent and the terror inside me is over – baring. I bring my weight up over the side, dragging myself to the black soil of the surface ground, immediately ready to help Cook. The menacing soldiers of blackness screech and roar closer as Cook battles the ground for my hand and I scream to him, “Jump for it! Grab my hand!”The ground slides again and he leaps up for my hand, his blue eyes so wild and frightened. With a mercy from beyond my understand his hand clasps into mine and I grab with all the might left in me, hoisting his body up the side as the hard rough soil at his feet gives in to a land slide of red and black rocks that rushes for the soldiers below.

Breathless and exhausted, he and I stagger away from the edge and topple down to the hard black rock like earth. In that moment the silence seems safe, but then roars and squeals erupt from the crevasse and within seconds we are up, rushing to the edge where we see the black soldiers rising from the dirt, still glistening in black cloaks and shrouds as though made of water. “God damn!” says Cook grabbing my hand as we begin to run away from the crevasse and the black darkness that lay on the other side of the mound towards the city. Behind us, like black swarms of ants the soldiers of shadows begin to exit after us like valiant gazelles on the ground. As we savagely dart across this barren black land a fume of black shapelessness descends from the sky on the left and we stop abruptly, lost for any safety. “Come on!” I say, gripping now his wrist as pulling him away, horizontally with the crevasse.“What are you doing?” he shouts as we hast alongside the crevasse, the forces of darkness behind us as I begin to lead him towards the crevasse. “Lynel!” he screams in alarm as we near the crevasse again. But I can not afford to stop focusing, I must survive this I don’t want to loose to this blackness. The soldiers roar and screech towards us, the icy shadow falls upon us from the monstrous blackness above us and the crevasse is upon us.

“Jump!” I shout as we grow nearer and nearer.“What?” he exclaims back as the opening looms on the ground of our path like a giant mouth waiting to swallow us into its abyss. We near the last steps and with all my might I grab his wrist and I leap. For the moment that our bodies hovered suspended over this mouth in the ground, it felt as though we were truly flying forward more than we should as the wide darkness of the crevasse mouth past below us.
We hit the other side, barreling to the ground and rolling as the ground inclines in rugged bumps and dents away from the crevasse. I am the first to jauntily get to my feet, the soldiers of shadows hovering at the edge and the black shapeless entity moving for us still. I grab Cook by the arm, “Come on!” and briefly wish to enquire about his bedazzled look. I spin to face the darkness I had seen laying ahead of the city and it appears now to be a black thick mist, a terrific sight but none the less, our only hope to evade the cloud of revenge.