Chapter 8: We Outrun the Goats

Chapter 7

I swear, I told myself. I swear that if I ever get through this, I will eat goat for a week straight as revenge for this mad dash and for the hell I went through this week.

We ran. Where before we moved at a brisk walk to preserve our energy, we threw that plan to the earth and got the heck out of there. We ran around curves at breakneck speeds, hoping to god that nothing horrible was around the next corner. After what seemed like seconds we began to hear the clop, clop, clop of hooves following us.

“I thought that Satyrs were peaceful nature spirits.” Steve gasped out as we rounded a third corner.

“Land of rejects and oddities, that is what the catacombs are.” I replied, strangely not so winded.

“Discuss later, run now,’ Alex advised. Then followed her own advise and continued to run.

Then they started catching up.

As I rounded a corner arrows hit the rocks where I had just been and I heard a “bah-ah-ah, almost had the human!”

With a nasty feeling that I was the human the goat thing was talking about, I switched Ignus from a sword to a shield, I was running rear guard and it was easier to stop arrows with a shield than with a sword. A group of fauns appeared in front of us, but before I could respond Steve threw a cord looking that sliced them like a piano wire through cheese. That was one image I could have lived without, but it flipped around in my head for a little bit before a second group tried to use me as stepping stones, thinking my shields were just for show.

I sure surprised them.

Then landed on the top of my shield, where the curve around my arm apexes - technically the most balanced part to stand on. I quickly turned the shield from under them so they fell backwards, jumped and spun like a top, using the sharp edges on the bottom of the shield to slice up the front of the bastards. I caught one in the throat before I had to put the shields away and roll on the ground, coming dizzily up to my feet and continuing the mad dash after my companions, bringing my shields out again.

After I blocked some arrows they stopped using the bows, but I heard the more modern firearms being loaded and armed. Steve fell back to me at this point.

“How are you at pulling carts?” He asked, gasping after every other word. I looked at him like he was insane.

“He can put up a shield to defend us from the guns,” Alex explained.

“So whats with the cart bit?” I asked.

“I cannot run like this and shield us at the same time. Between the two of you, you are the least winded, and Alex can deal with anyone in front who tries to stop us.” He responded, still gasping. Made sense to me.

“I’m pretty sure I can keep this pace and pull a cart for a bit longer, not sure how long that will be.” I replied.

“Longer than if I have to run and shield from guns.” Alex responded and he threw some purple fire ahead of us. As we closed in on his flame, it formed a little cart like what kids use to pull stuff behind them, only purple instead of red. In a surprising burst of speed, Steve dashed forward and hopped into the cart, the handle turned into a couple of shoulder straps. He started to speak in Ancient Greek, and I slipped my shoulders in and continued to run.

Running and dragging a cart behind me was not a great experience, but after the first set of bullets bounced off the shield Steve was making, I decided not to complain. We ran like that for a few more minutes, Steve protecting us from the guns, Alex clearing the way in front of us with her sword. Then we came to the doors.

The sound of hoof falls died away, and I heard a “Good luck heroes,” before they died away completely. We just stared at the giant door that blocked the path. Steve was dead tired and unable to move very far under his own power. Plus he was mumbling something about pastries and cheeses, so I figured that he would be useless without some rest. Alex was leaning on her sword and gasping for air, sweating from all the running and fighting we had to do.

“How are you not dead tired?” She asked me, sounding kind of angry. I looked at myself. I had a light sheen of sweat on me, but otherwise I felt like I could run a few more miles like this.

“Dunno,” I responded simply. Hey, it was the truth. “Let’s set up camp again, I’ll see what I can do to let us safely rest and recover our strength. Fire boy over here is not going to do anything without a couple of pasties it seems, and you look ready to drop dead from exhaustion.” Before Alex could argue I dragged Steve in his cart over to an area of floor that would not be hit by the door if it opened, close to the hinges and the wall, and pulled out my collapsible tent. I activated the tent and tossed it on the ground, then rummaged through my pockets some.

Alex came over, her sword back as a baseball bat and in its holder on her backpack. She lifted Steve out of the cart, which dissolved when he left it (which made my shoulders happy) and put him by the tent. She reached into his backpack and pulled out a few items I hadn’t seen before, and one familiar item. The first was a ring of metal which she placed in front of the tent, followed by what looked like a flat square, but she grabbed a bit on the top and pulled it up, revealing an oven. She took the one familiar item, the sleeping bag, rolled it out, opened it, and put Steve inside. Then she went over to the oven, opened it up, and pulled out what looked like a plastic cup with straw sticking out, she stuck the straw into his mount, left the cup by his head, and sat down by me.

During this time I had been staring at the door and tinkering with some metal scraps in my hand.

“How do you do that?” She asked as she sat down next to me.

“Do what?” I responded, no clue what she was talking about.

“Whatever your doing with the metal you work with. It looks like your running hour hand along it and finding just the point you need to connect it to the second piece your working with, and suddenly its like they are fused together or something. I saw you do that with the rose too.” I looked down at my hands as they did their thing and saw that she was right, my hands were pretty much putting the metal together in just the right way that it wanted to stay together.

“Honestly, I don’t know. If I don’t think about what I am doing with my hands I make great stuff, when I think about what I am doing with my hands I make better stuff. When my hands work on their own and what I am making isn’t too big, I make fantastic stuff. I guess you can say that the metal speaks to my hands, and they speak to it. That is the best solution I can come up with. But don’t worry about me, I get the feeling I can stay up for another day and still be helpful if necessary. You and Steve are pooped, go to sleep. I will keep watch.”

“The dreams?” She asked. I jumped.

“How did you know?”

“Jeebus mentioned that he booted you out of the thief's dream, or the thief out of yours, or something like that.” She replied. Oh, right. So I explained my dream to her, what had happened in it.

“So, it seems like you met the guy before, on a quest with your Roman friends.” She replied after I had finished.

“Sums it up,” I said. The guy from my dreams did seem familiar. When I looked at him though, this anger raged inside of me, trying to take over. It scared me really, how powerful that anger was.

“Go to sleep Alex,” I said. “I’ll wake you guys up in a couple of hours and we will knock on the big doors. Hopefully none of us have the blood of Englishmen.”

“Ha ha,” she replied. “If you wake me up with a ‘fe fi fo fum’ I will beat you over the head with my bat.” Then she went to bed.

Chapter 9