Aurelius and I (34 page)

My fascination with my body temperature was, however, only momentary, slipping almost entirely off my sensory radar the instant that I moved from that groggy, half-dream state into true consciousness and became aware of the searing pain that was seemingly present in every part of my body.

At first my only focus was for the dull ache that had engulfed my entire skull in a throbbing cloud of suffering - the kind of ache that hurt all the more if you tried to move your head in any way. Only this one was so bad that if felt as though my head was being shaken from side to side even when it lay flat and still against the hard, stone surface upon which I had awoken.

The realisation of this surface brought my attention to the pain in my back, particularly between my shoulder blades, where it felt as though my flesh had been pierced by a thousand tiny arrowheads. A pain that was only intensified by the smooth, solid surface they were pressed against. In an effort to relieve some small percentage of my suffering I attempted to roll onto my side, thus providing my spine with some welcome respite from the unerring solidity of its current resting place.

It was then that I got really scared.

I couldn’t move. Not even a little. It was the most bizarre, most terrifying sensation I have ever experienced. My body simply would not do what I told it to. I felt as though I were imprisoned within myself. I quickly began to panic.

I’m paralysed
I thought to myself as hysteria crashed over me like a tidal wave.

I took a deep breath and attempted to assess things more rationally.

You’re obviously not paralysed, you idiot
I derided myself internally. I was correct of course. Things would have been a whole lot less painful had I actually been removed of feeling throughout my body. So what was going on then?

This may sound somewhat foolish, but it was only at that moment that I was able to think clearly enough through the semi-conscious pain I had been experiencing to realise that my eyes were still closed. I opened them cautiously, with a great sense of foreboding at the prospect of what new horrors I might be about to discover.

The first thing I observed was the reason for my apparent paralysation. In fact, I was neither paralysed, nor under the influence of any kind of spell or enchantment, I had simply been tied down. Tied very firmly, to something very large, and very sturdy - something I quickly realised to be the Stone of Soolarondoo.

Animated by the realisation of my situation, my eyes searched desperately around the room for an element of hope, some small promise that perhaps all was not lost. They found none.

The first thing my glance fell upon was two mermaids, smiling smugly, from the water’s edge. I remembered now – the hand around my ankle, the cold shock of the water, the dirty, black-tasting fluid filling my lungs as I tried desperately to reach the surface but was held back by arms I could feel, but could not see.

Overcome with a hatred for the two sea-witches that had been responsible for my ungentlemanly defeat, I continued to scan the room in the hope of locating the fairy companions that might once again prove to be my saviours.

It was a hope that was short-lived.

There, to my right, an enormous troll sat upon an upturned, slatted, wooden crate. Beneath it I saw movement, the movement of my friends.

“
He’s alive!
” I heard Ophelia exclaim with an unreserved glee that seemed woefully out of place given our current situation.

For now,
I thought to myself pessimistically.

I was about to shut my eyes once more, for nothing but misery had greeted them since their opening, when my mind returned to me one last weakly flickering flame of distant hope. I turned eagerly to my left only for the flame to be immediately, and firmly extinguished, replaced instead with desperation and guilt. There on the floor before me, lay the unmoving corpse of Aurelius-Octavius Jumbleberry-Jones.

I felt tears well in my eyes once again, but they were given no time to fall.

“I think our almighty chosen one had awakened,” Captain Blackhearts familiar voice came from behind me. His words were met by an echo of deferential laughter from his various henchmen. “We’ve been waiting for you, Charlie. We didn’t want you to miss out on all the fun.”

The enormous, repulsive, Gravlier stepped from behind me into my limited field of vision. In his hand, I was disturbed but not surprised to discover, he held the genuine Scimitar.

“Today must indeed be my lucky day,” he continued on, “for I am not only afforded the opportunity to destroy the Stone of Soolarondoo, and with it the viability of this forest as a home for the Tendrala – thus bringing The Professor’s dream of a new, Alundri-ruled world ever closer - but I also get to rid him of the great, prophesised champion of the tendrala in the process.”

He burst into gleeful laughter once more at these last words.

“You see, Charlie, with you out of the way, their will be little to stop us in our drive to rid the world of humanity. And the best thing is, that you humans, with your obsessive need to cover nature’s work in concrete, are going to help us do it. You are providing even those Alundri who once saw our cause as extremist with great motivation to join us through your unnecessary, uncaring destruction of their homes. The plain truth of it is that this world will soon be ours, and we couldn’t have done it without you.”

More laughter.

“Fortunately, Charlie, there’s no need for you to worry your young mind with all that any longer, for you’re not going to be here to see it.”

This time there came no laughter, simply an angry resignation at the task that befell the great beast. Slowly, deliberately, he moved himself into position.

I watched in horror as he raised the scimitar high above his head. I watched as he launched into yet another long, and immodest speech about how glorious his victory had been and how he and his armies were now unstoppable. I watched as he took one last murderous look at me with his single yellow eye. I watched as that single eye was crushed under the weight of a spectacularly aimed pebble travelling at roughly ninety miles an hour.

Even as a child it had long ago struck me that the bad guys in films would surely end up on the winning side with far greater regularity should they not delight so in spending such vast amounts of time revealing their detailed plans and revelling in their as yet unearned victories as opposed to simply disposing of their foes quickly and efficiently. I remain to this day, however, immensely grateful that they do not, for, in my own experience, it seems that this strange phenomena of overly confident hesitation is simply a case of art imitating life, and it is a phenomena that is directly responsible for my being alive today to tell you my story - a story with which I shall now proceed without further interruption.

“OOOOWWWEEE!”, cried Blackheart in a surprisingly girly voice, his free hand instinctually, but uselessly moving to guard his eye after the event.

“Surrender beast, or face the wrath of the tendrala!”

The threat came from across the room. I was unable to lift my head to the correct angle that I might discover its source, and was, in any case, reluctant to remove my gaze from my impending doom at the hands of the scimitar. What I was able to ascertain was that the voice was that of a woman, and it was one which I had heard before.

“NEVER!” responded the Captain, stumbling blindly around, unable to see the new threat posed to him. “KILL THEM!” he commanded before tumbling toward me with scimitar outstretched. I held my eyes tightly shut, fearing not for the first time that day that this must certainly be the end.

CLINK

The relieving sound of metal on stone filled my ears and brought a paralysing wave of relief to my chest.

I opened my eyes to see Rain and Barry, the tree elf and the ogre I had met on my earlier venture into the forest with Aurelius, doing battle with the trolls that had been commanded to seize them. It was then that I realised they were not alone. They had with them another companion, who, although smaller and less powerful than the others, I was most excited to see again...my beloved Baskerville.

Happiness flowed through me like a shot of pure adrenaline at the safe return of my most faithful friend. It was a joy that quickly doubled when I came to realise something else...I was sitting up.

In the fit of ecstatic surprise at opening my eyes after the swipe of the scimitar to discover that I was not only alive, but also being rescued, it had not occurred to me that before that blow from the scimitar I had been unable to identify my cavalry due to the fact that I was unable to move any part of my body but my head. Now, however, I found I was able to freely move my torso. In his blind flailing, Blackheart had sliced through my restraints.

I tried to get up from the tablet, but found that my legs were still immobile. I looked down to see that they were tied down only by twine and set about loosening my restraints that I might join my friends in our final battle.

I soon discovered that it was a hopeless task. The twine was knotted too tightly and too complexly for me to have any hope of undoing it in time, especially given that my fingers remained largely numb from the icy water. I lay back in hopeless frustration, desperately scouring the floor around me for some sort of cutting instrument.

“Need a hand?” came a tiny voice from down by my feet. I looked down to discover Ophelia’s pale, child-like face smiling back at me. Out of a sheath that had lain hidden beneath her leafy skirt, she drew the sword given to her by her grandfather at the start of our journey together and set about sawing through my restraints.

I looked around me with great urgency, attempting to assess our situation. Things were going well; Barry’s strength and Rain’s slingshot were combining with great success against the powerful trolls, who, with the help of the distracting factor of Ophelia’s parents, were beginning to falter despite their immense reserves of strength and stamina.

Pleased with our progress, I allowed my eyes to wander over to the injured-Blackheart, whom I discovered looking a great deal less injured than before, staring right back at me, pure hatred filling his single, bloodshot eye.

“
HURRY, OPHELIA, HURRY!”
I almost screamed as I saw the great beast begin to step slowly toward me, wielding the scimitar with bloodthirsty relish.

“Almost there,” she assured me. But it appeared that almost would not be good enough as the angry gravlier broke into a run, the scimitar raised high above his head and ready to strike, a fearful battle cry emanating from his enormous, yellow-fanged mouth.

“Got it,” shouted the little princess, and not a moment too soon, I rolled quickly onto the floor to the right of the tablet just as Blackheart’s blade swept across its surface from the left.

I regained my feet and found myself opposite his evil, vomit-inducing face. For a long moment we simply stared at each other. He then began to circle the great stone, coming toward me in a clockwise direction. I moved in the same direction so as to ensure we remained on directly opposite one another at all times. We continued this futile game of cat and mouse for some moments and it occurred to me that we must have looked as though we were recreating a scene from a bad television comedy. Then Blackheart did something that defied the senseless logic of cheap comedy – he climbed over the tablet.

As simple and obvious a course of action as this seemed, it did, in fact, completely flummox me. I had no conception of what to do or where to go next, and so I simply did the only thing I could do and backed slowly, and meekly away.

Needless to say the Captain pursued me. He did so slowly and deliberately, taking visible pleasure in the slow stalking of his helpless prey, prolonging my inevitable demise. The truth was that he had no need to rush. He knew very well that sooner or later I would reach the water that circled the ancient scene of our final battle, and when I did, his sadistic mermaid minions would no doubt be waiting for me, and this time I would not be allowed to make my way back to dry land alive.

SPLASH!

The unmistakable sound of something of considerable size hitting water at speed echoed around the chamber. Still backing away, I chanced a glance across the cave to try to ascertain what had happened. It was as I had suspected the instant I had heard the noise; disaster had struck.

Barry, in his eager efforts to subdue the enormous trolls, had stepped too close to the water. It was the opportunity the mermaids had been waiting for and they had dragged him under. Naturally, one would have expected that a creature so huge and powerful as Barry would have faired much better against two fairly petit mermaids than I, as a boy of eight, had done. Sadly though, this was not the case for Barry’s efforts were hampered by one key fact of which I had been unaware until that moment; ogres cannot swim.

Despite the arrival of the cavalry then, our cause, once again, appeared doomed. Without the considerable help of her enormous companion, Rain’s defence against the two trolls crumbled instantaneously. She was simply unable to get off enough shots with her slingshot with the necessary speed to subdue her foes. As such she was quickly dispossessed of both her weapon and her ability to stand by the rapidly advancing beasts. Had it not been for the quick thinking of the royal couple in hurling the pebbles from the tree elf’s abandoned ammunition sack, at the trolls in order to distract them, she would surely have been dispossessed of her life as well. Even now though, it seemed only a matter of time.