Entry 9: Taken

-Me-

At some point, while I was playing with my stone tablets in the room with shelves, I remember hearing strange noises coming from the other side of the wall. That's odd…

I held the tablet in my hands tightly, then used "Felladin" to carefully sneak to the wall and put my ear to it. Is there something on the other end? Is it more moving objects? I heard more noises, and I became certain.

NO! Why are they here again!? IT HADN'T EVEN BEEN VERY LONG SINCE THEY CAME LAST TIME!!! It had only been a thousand years, though it only felt like yesterday for me. I was feeling very distressed now, and I was afraid of using "Felladin" to pass through the wall and check what was really going on.

Knowing that there was nothing between me and the next room over, I skittered behind one of the shelves and held on to a tablet anxiously. Maybe if I hid here, they wouldn't come near me? Who knows if they have any pattern to the way they lurk about?

Seemingly moments after I heard the multiple noises enter my world, I saw the evil golden light rounding the corner and coming closer, along with the sounds of the moving objects.

Out of a moment of brave curiosity, I peeked my head around the corner of one of the shelves – wanting to know what the moving objects looked like. Sadly, the golden light they carried with them was too bright to let me make out individual features very well. My eyes stung just looking, so I turned away.

I watched with bated breath as multiple animates spread out throughout the room. I heard them moving my tablets around for some reason, and I chose to watch, so long as they didn't come near me.

Minutes dragged by, and the Animates' voices became louder – as if excited. As I continued to watch the interesting things they did, my fear gradually was mixed with curiosity, and my slumbering sense of adventure awakened.

Soon, my curiosity got the better of me, and I stepped out in order to get a better look. Not wanting to be burdened with something while I put my full attention on my new Things, I dropped my stone tablet with a bang and stepped closer.

I really didn't know that the moving objects would react when I made noises. I just naively stood out in the open with my mouth agape, and drool dripping down my chin. It took me a moment too late to realize that the golden light was moving closer to me.

When I finally knew what was going on, I screamed and darted behind the shelf to my left. I noticed that if there was something between me and the golden light, my eyes wouldn't hurt. I also knew that if the golden light got too close, then the moving objects would touch me again.

My body had always been very strong, and my little legs could carry me monstrously fast. However, despite being able to see things now with the golden light filling the room, I couldn't tell how close the fast approaching wall in front of me was. I was still unused to sight, you see, and depth perception was impossible.

My accident was inevitable, and I crashed full speed into the wall, making a loud boom sound. I noticed that the stone tile on the wall had cracks where my skull had smashed into it.

Despite having a skull made out of metal, the impact was big, and I felt my brain hit the back of my forehead. It was the most painful thing I had ever felt, and I collapsed onto the ground – mostly limp, but sometimes spasming.

-Arim-

Arim and the Dista warriors hadn't been in the library of stone tablets for long before they all heard a loud crash sound of something falling on the floor, followed by a boom sound of something else running into the wall.

Alarmed by the sudden noise, Arim ran past a trembling Dista warrior, who exclaimed, "I saw something move over there!"

Drawn first by caution, then by interest, everybody held their torches and made their way towards the source of the groaning. Moments later, one of the warriors yelled out, "Somebody's hurt over here!"

Arim pushed his way through the congregated warriors to see a naked child on the ground.

Mah, another one of the warriors, immediately bent down and took a blanket out of his pack. They were originally going to use the blankets to move pieces of the library in case the tablets were fragile. Mah now used it to cover the little girl, as she seemed pitiful lying there.

Looking down at the child, Arim frowned, thinking that nothing about this situation was normal.

First off, the child was pale – so pale that she glowed white like snow. Arim had never seen skin like that, and he wondered if she was human… or something else? Arim had heard that all the color is drained away from a ghost in their spiritual forms, so maybe this little child is the ghost of a poor soul that perished here?

Shaking his head, Arim dispelled the thought of the child being a ghost. According to the Shaman Kian, ghosts also glow a silvery color, and there was no such thing around the child. The little girl was definitely still alive.

Second, Arim noticed that the wall was cracked with blood coating it. Arim didn't like to think that the girl had created that crack with her head. He would hate to think that she could run fast enough to injure stone. Screw that; if she hit the stone that hard, she should be dead!

Another thing Arim noticed was that the child looked to be about 3 or 4 years old yet wasn't wearing any clothes. Was there nobody here to look after her? No tribe? Parents? Was she abandoned here?

In truth, Arim never connected the little girl with Felkala until Toor spoke up, "Is this little girl Felkala? Shaman Rai mentioned that this place was meant to house a person named that."

"Maybe," another warrior conceded, "Though he mentioned that he had met Felkala a thousand years ago. This is just a little girl. How could she still be alive after so long? Do you think her parents abandoned her here because she looks like a ghost with this pale skin?"

Curious about the girl, Arim asked while Toor slowly picked her up, "Girl, do you know a person named Felkala? What's your name?"

-Me-

As soon as clarity came back to my mind, I heard the moving objects clearly making voice noises. I only recognized one of the words – "Felkala?" The rest was gibberish.

Out of curiosity, I weakly replied back, "Fel…ka…la?" Is that what they were saying to me?

-Arim-

"Fel…ka…la…?" Was that a question? More importantly, the possibility of the girl being Felkala freaked Arim out.

If she had been a live for this long, then she must be a shaman too? A thousand year shaman this young looking must be even more powerful than Shaman Rai? More importantly, did Shaman Rai know about this girl the whole time? Was there something he was lying about?

The thought gave Arim a sense of crisis because Rai was somebody too powerful to cross.

Arim couldn't leap to conclusions, as he was still doubting the identity of the girl. Instead, he turned to his companions and said, "Let's leave the library alone for a moment. If this girl's been living here for a while, we should search the area. There must be a source of food and water. There might even be another exit."

The other men nodded in agreement and followed Arim as they explored the mysterious ruin. They were amazed at the size of the place – especially the grand ceiling in the center room. Only shamans from the largest tribes might know how to make a building like this, and the thought of raiding such a place was intimidating.

What perplexed the eleven explorers even more was that besides the library of stone tablets, the entire building was barren. No outward exits, no water, and no food.

"That's strange," Arim noted, "I had examined the door we came in from, and it was locked from the outside. There's no way the girl could have gone outside to forage for food. What's she been eating? She probably wasn't here for very long. I don't think she's Felkala."

"You think somebody left her here to starve to death? That's cruel," one of the warriors noted sadly.

-Me-

The floating, surreal feeling of being carried persisted as the moving objects moved throughout my entire stone world. It sometimes felt like they were checking every inch of the place.

While they were doing this, I felt the strength slowly come back to my limbs, and the clarity come back to my mind. In that moment, I remembered that the golden light didn't hurt whenever there was something between it and my eyes. So, I took a gamble and put my hands over my eyes.

To my wonder, the golden light disappeared, and I laughed in momentary excitement and gloating arrogance at having conquered the golden light. I tried removing my hands and putting them back over my eyes just to be sure, and my world became dark and light respectively. It was a wonderful new discovery!

I then remembered that I was still being carried, and I cried out in distress as I weakly tried to struggle. My strength still wasn't entirely with me yet, and I was held in place. I realized that when I struggled and felt the strange things holding me, their limbs were hard like stone, while my body was soft and thin.

Realizing that the moving objects weren't exactly hurting me when they were touching me, I chose to stay still and see what they were up to.

At first, the insecurity of not knowing whether I would be dropped, or where I would be taken was so frightening, I felt sick. However, as soon as I started to feel safe in their arms, I began to calm down and feel peaceful.

Soon enough, I was relaxing and awkwardly adjusting my body so that I'd feel more comfortable in their arms. It was even a little exciting, not knowing which room they would take me to next. I wanted them to keep going.

-Arim-

As they were checking each of the rooms thoroughly, the little girl started to move about – weakly at first, then progressively stronger.

Toor thought at first that the girl was going to break free from his arms, so he held her tighter and stopped her from moving. "That was harder than I thought," Toor thought out loud, "This girl is pretty strong!"

This whole time, Arim was intently studying the child. She didn't make any sense to him, after all, and Arim wanted to understand. Was the girl a thousand plus year old shaman, or was she a little girl abandoned here recently?

While looking, Arim noticed that the girl would start covering her face and uncovering it while giggling to herself. She even started moving around and adjusting herself in Toor's arms. Never mind that it was adorable, she was acting just like a baby.

This made Arim lean more towards his second theory, where the girl is a genuine child, and not an ancient shaman with unnatural youth. Perhaps the real Felkala had left long ago?

As she was playing and hiding her eyes, Arim was studying her, and he noticed something else odd about her. Whenever her hands moved away, he would get a glimpse of her eyes…

To his surprise, her eyes were glowing a bright, golden color. When seen from his peripheral vision, the glow was soft and soothing, but the longer he stared directly into them, the more they seemed to burn brightly.

He eventually had to tear his gaze away when his eyes started to sting from the blazing light. Strangely enough, something in his mind seemed like it was lit on fire – as if her eyes could burn directly into the Dream World.

A shaman's eyes are known to glow while they're casting a spell, but the way her eyes lit up was very different. First, her eyes never stopped glowing, and second, the color seemed to get brighter the longer you looked at them. In fact, her eyes were so captivating that the image was ingrained in his mind. Even when he closed his eyes, he swore he could still see those golden irises.

This made Arim indecisive again on whether or not she's a long lived shaman. Only shamans have eyes that glow. However, she's not quite like a shaman, because her eyes never stop glowing.

Soon, they were done with checking the entire place out. Finding nothing, they all agreed to send the child out first before going back for the library.

They opened up the front doorway to find Shaman Rai waiting on the other end.

-Rai-

Rai had been waiting for nearly half an hour when the Dista warriors came back out again. He had been anxious on whether or not they would find Felkala or not, as it had been a long time since they entered.

To his shock, when they came out carrying a wrapped up figure with a bleeding head, Rai recognized the child all too well. If they came out with Felkala, it should have been an old woman or at least an adult lady by now

Instead, it appeared she had barely aged a year or so. Was she perhaps aging slower than he? Would that mean that she has more circles as a shaman than he? Can he even fight her?

Of course, he kept these thoughts to himself.

To Rai's surprise, the little girl turned to him and reached out to him for some reason. She looked like a child asking to be carried, with the way she grunted and beckoned with her fingers.

Rai's heart shook a little looking at this, because the image of a monster he had for a thousand years was momentarily forgotten. He shook his head to clear the thought. He then remembered his wife's stiff body, and he reaffirmed his intent for revenge.

Coldly, Rai held out his hands from across the doorway and said, "I'll take the child to your camp. Just worry about extracting the library."

Everything looked like it was going smoothly at first. Toor had a naïve look in his eyes as he leaned forward to hand the child over, when Arim abruptly grabbed him by the shoulders and held him back. "Wait, Toor."

They stood there for a moment; Rai could see it in Arim's eyes – that Arim was hesitating to hand the child over. Was Arim suspecting anything?

After a moment of tension, Arim asked, "What do you want this child for?"

"Excuse me?" Rai asked. He could tell that Arim was getting a little unfriendly with his tone.

"I think you've been lying to us about this child," Arim accused. "I remember that you promised us the library, as long as you got to keep everything else. There was nothing inside the Sanctuary except for the child. You knew she was here, and you want her for some reason."

Rai cursed to himself, "You shouldn't underestimate them just because they're really young. This Arim isn't stupid." Out loud, Rai excused himself by saying, "It HAS been a thousand years since I came here last. Perhaps the thing I was looking for had already been taken away? Besides, we need a reliable adult to take care of her while you all get the library out."

Arim thought for a moment to himself. Nothing about the child was normal. There were no signs of her being able to leave the vault for a long time, as the door hadn't been touched in ages. She also survived with no sustenance. She was also abnormally strong, recovered too quickly, had pale skin and grey hair, and had glowing golden eyes.

She clearly wasn't human, which brought up some strange possibilities. There are other tribes of non-humans rumored to live in the world, and it was said that a human can bind their souls with a contract to them to attain great powers. If this girl was a member of one of those tribes, then he would be treated like a hero if he brought her back to the clan.

Instead of voicing his thoughts, Arim tossed out an inane excuse, "No. I don't want to trust the raising of a child to a clan-less vagabond. It's better that she be raised with our Dista Clan."

Miffed at being called a vagabond, and frustrated at not getting his way, Rai darkly warned, "Remember that I'm a 5th Circle shaman. I'm not somebody even your most powerful clansmen can afford to offend."

"If I'm not wrong," Arim pointed out wryly, "You can't even enter this Sanctuary. There's a powerful enchantment here." Arim stopped himself from speaking further because he realized that he wouldn't be protected by the Sanctuary on his return trip home.

So, Arim quickly corrected himself, "I'm sorry for calling you a vagabond. I'm just thinking for the child's good. She needs to have a large clan to support her as she grows up. Growing up on the run with no roots would be bad for her development."

"Pissing off a 5th circle shaman is also bad for your development," Rai threatened. "We both know that you're not making it home if I don't want you to. You could always hide in the Sanctuary, but I'm going to live longer than you, and I can afford to wait you out." Rai then held out his hands. "Fulfill your end of the deal and hand Felkala over. Now!"

The suffocating pressure Rai gave off was enough to make any of these battle hardened warriors want to piss their pants. The warriors felt threatened and drew their weapons.

Arim, on the other hand, was standing on shaking legs – ready to collapse. With an unsteady voice, Arim said, "Toor. Just hand over the girl. It's not worth it."

Toor looked at Arim with a disrespect he didn't have before, and he didn't budge. All of this felt wrong to Toor, and he was disappointed that the man they were all hoping would be apprenticed to Shaman Kian gave in so easily to pressure.

Before Toor could resist, Arim snatched the girl from his arms and handed her firmly to Rai. After the girl was in the shaman's arms, Arim spat on the ground in front of him, "You'll die without a grave one day!"

Rai turned his back to the Dista warriors and walked off with the child into the dark tunnel. He muttered with an empty expression, "I probably will."