A warning: This s amazingly crappily done. My apologies.

Chapter 5

Damian Jerked awake. The blue sky stretched , cloudless, above him, and the grass was damp on his back. He sat up slowly, relaxing his grip on the sketch book that he had been clutching to his chest. He pushed his hair behind his ears and looked around. He was in the middle of a patch of weedy grass and pine needles, and he was surrounded by trees.

He stared at the ground for a minute trying to figure out what was going on, then he climbed to his feet and stared around at the trees. He could here something, it sounded like hoof beats quickly getting louder.

And suddenly he could see them coming at him through the trees. Four men on horseback, moving towards him fast. He just had time to realize that they were wearing tunics and carrying spears when there was a crack of wood against his skull and the ground flying at his face.

He pulled his head up from the dirt until he was on his hands and knees. Hot waves were crashing through his head. There was shouting and movement all around him, but he couldn’t make sense of it. He could taste blood.

There were hooves and leather boots all around him. and hands, he tried to fight them off but suddenly there was a sharp pain in his stomach, it washed up his chest and into his brain.

Damian moaned, pulling his bare arms closer against himself, he heard clinking metal. He opened his eyes. He was curled up on a stone floor, cold iron rings encircled his wrists, he sat up. He was chained to the wall.

Damian, shifted the manacles up his arm and rubbed his wrists where the cold metal pressed against them. The stone wall at his back was just as cold as the floor. He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

Finally Damian uncurled himself and stretched out his legs trying to uncramp them. The movement made the throbbing in his head worse. His eyes stung with misery, he blinked rapidly to ward off tears and ran a hand through his hair. Dried blood clumped it over a very tender spot in the back of his head.

In the wall opposite him was a heavy wooden door with a square window fitted with vertical bars. It was ludicrous, a cheesy wild west prison door.

There voices and footsteps outside the door, he strained to listen, but as they approached him the voices stopped.

“Is that where he is?” a female voice asked loudly. A man’s head came into the view of his window, glanced at him and the disappeared again. There was muttering and clanging.

“Hey,” Said Damian suddenly, jumping to his feet. “What the hell’s going on?”

The face was in the window frame again. The man met Damian’s eyes briefly, and then hurried away. He leapt forward and the chains on his wrist jerked him back. He stumbled like a confused animal.

Damian stepped back to lean against the wall, trying to pull himself together.

“You look like you’re sixteen. What the hell happened to you?” A voice said somewhere beyond his cell. This had to be a cell, it couldn’t be anything else.

“You realize there’s no one else in this area that I could be talking to.” It was the same female voice he’d heard come in.

“I’m seventeen.” He said.

“Ah, so you started this all at like, age two.”

“What?” Then was a silence and then:

“You haven’t been in contact for fifteen years if you were seventeen that would mean that your entire life and training up to the break of point would have been two years.” She said dryly.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“What’s this, amnesia? They identified you didn’t they?”

“Who, those crazy guys with spears? I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean? Eudora doesn’t exactly have the most advanced justice system in the world but I’m pretty sure it’s Keepon that just chooses their prison attendees at random.”

Damian had no idea that that meant.

“I suppose that doesn’t mean anything to you ?” The girl said.

“No it doesn’t.” Damian replied, a bit relived.

“Figures. Evil dictators don’t need to pay to much attention to the politics of governments in their way, eh?”

“Seems like the smart ones do, so they can turn the people against the government.” Damian said, his confusion deepening.

“Who wants to listen to an outside agitator?”

“More people than usually listen to the crazy local with the revolutionary ideas.”

She was quiet for a moment and then: “So your saying you’ve done it all be convincing citizens to turn against their governments?” Damian had no idea what this meant, he decided to go with the ever useful, when it doubt, make fun of it, solution.

“Yep propaganda. An evil dictators most loyal servant.”

“No magic then?” good, she was joking.

“yeah” He said “I used the magical counter-weight of anti-justice.”

“OK what the hell has happened?”

What had happened? Damian had no idea nothing he’d seen made any sense at all. He turned and pressed his hand against the wall the chains clinked and clung to him, the wall was cold and hard and smooth. He ran his hand through his hair, it was dry and tangled with dried blood. His hand paused over the tender place on the back of his head. It hurt. He pressed it harder. He could feel hot pain around his eyes, he could feel a pulse in the bruise. He pressed it against the wall, he could feel the cold stone through the sensitive bruise, and the pain making all his muscles tense. He relaxed his head and fingered the metal cuffs on his wrists. He ran his fingers back and forth over the links of the chain, then he turned his hands over and stared at them. The tops of his fingers were still callused, the beginnings of blisters that had begun to form from the heavy practicing the past few days were tender. There was black ink spilled across his hands form the pen. His arms were bare and covered with goosebumps. He slid to the floor and wrapped them around his knees again What had happened?

Rain was falling all around. Damian walked quickly down the familiar sidewalk of his neighborhood. Everything was dark and blurry through he water, but he didn’t mind. He knew these streets in the dark. (which of course, it never truly was.) He reached Wall-Mart which somehow, stood out blue and white in the rain. He climbed over the fence with practiced ease.

There was a shadow suddenly, he looked up. A body was falling silently with the rain.

Damian stepped back as Roger’s body hit the ground. Blood sprayed up, and even as he jerked away warm liquid splashed his face. His hand came up to his face as his head hit the stone wall.

Damian’s eyes opened to grayness. He pulled his hand away from his face, it was covered with a sticky brown liquid. He was in the stone cell again and there was screaming in the hallway. There was an upturned wooden bowl on the floor in front of him. It smelled vaguely like oatmeal. His head hurt and there were stomping feet in the hallway.

The thick wooden door swung open, and he was surrounded by men with unsheathed swards. There was a few frozen seconds and finally Damian mumbled:

“What the hell just happened?” No one said anything. They were all staring at him wide eyed and breathing quickly, there weapons pointed at him. Damian was afraid to move.

Elongated minutes passed.

Finally another man stepped though the door.

“Tell me what just occurred.” He commanded staring at Damian.

“Hell if I know.” Damian said. He wished he could move to wipe the stickiness from his face, but he didn’t dare.

“Why did the servant run from your cell?” the man in the doorway barked.

“I didn’t realize there was someone else in here.” Damian said. He looked at the bowl on the floor. Some kind of worker had been inn here, that made sense.

“I was asleep.” He explained.

“You have no idea what caused her to run screaming from this room?”

“no.”

Some one slipped in around the man. A boy, thin and pale. Damian recognized the boy from the woods.

“Hey, you were in that clearing out there. What the hell is going on?” He said. The boy looked warily at Damian but said nothing. He just peered slowly around the barren cell.

“It’s clean.” He finally said.

There was a scrambling, and all the sward barrows were scrambling out of the room. After some confusion at the doorway, the room was empty again, and the heavy door swung back into place. He could here the scraping of metal on wood.

Damian breathed out, and reached up a hand to wipe his face. He succeeded in getting his hands stick y as well.

---

well. That was confusing. Yeah, I told you it was a fantasy story. But yeah, I actually had too much fun with the beginning modern world chapters, and I’m not liking this part so much. Which is really lame cuz this is the main story. Bleah.

I might just write a separate story that takes place in the modern/real world with the same characters. So keep an eye out for that. And you can keep reading this one too if you want but yeah, it sucks.

God I LOVE my reviewers.

Psycho like a moo: I like Roger too. Yeah it’s weird that we had the same idea for Roger and Sev’s fathers. Great minds think alike eh? (hehe don’t you hate it when I call him Sev?)

btw folks, you folks should read psycho like a moo, (If she’s posted that is.) which is completely different and much more interesting than mine.

faerie-gumdrops: Thanks for the reviewing it made me happy. Roger’s lyrics may come in, I’m not sure yet. I’ll try to take your advice.

Thron’s girl: Thank you. yeah I had fun writing those.