Karr-chapter 5, The Escape

Chapter 5
The Escape

Daniel shook his aching head as his senses began to come back into order. He leaned up and felt that his shoulder was terribly bruised.
“Okay,” he thought, “now that nothing seems to make sense, I should try to make a little sense of it.” So, he waited until the two had turned their backs and, believe it or not, they seemed to be walking off to a separate part of the cave. It was just the thing he needed to buy himself more time.
As he stood up and looked around his heart skipped a beat, there lay before him the splintered remains of the Karrkaroe. It was a saddening sight to see the large ship there as it lay in ruins. While Daniel studied it he could tell it must have taken a deadly nosedive.
His mind suddenly turned to the others and what happened before; he rushed toward the ship in a panic. What if they were unconscious like he had been? What if he couldn’t wake them up? Then his heart sank what if they weren’t there? He dropped to his knees…they weren’t there. Daniel threw aside splinters of wood in search of his family, and he found, “John!” he shouted, “are you okay?”
John’s eyes slowly opened as he sat up. “Aaaaaaahhhh,” John said with a touch of pain in his voice, “I’m just sore no more than a few bruises.”
“C’mon, hurry we need to get out of here before they come back!” Daniel warned.
“What? Who are you talking about?” John said with a confused look on his face.
“I…I don’t really know, but I don’t think they’re planning to help us out of here.”
Daniel carefully and slowly eased him up onto his feet. John took a deep breath and leaned over with his hand against the cave wall. Daniel, who was still frantic, was about to urge him on again when John said, “Daniel, wait, we can’t just run off, I need you to tell me what you saw.”
“Right, well you are the smarter one of us I have to admit, so, maybe you could understand what they said…” and he explained the best he could to John about master and Frawg, and although John was also clueless at the end of the tale it helped Daniel get his thoughts together and calm down. Then, they both agreed that they should explore the cave for an exit while at the same time looking for the others.
Daniel led John around the large cavern that they were stuck in and they searched every corner of it but found no other exits besides the one that Daniel had seen Master and Frawg leave from. John was informed of this and when they looked down that passage it went only straight and curved off no other way and, Sadly, they found no sign of Daniel’s mom, sister, or uncle.
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“ I have only two questions to ask,” said John as they rounded the cave for a third time, “one is: if this is some kind of underwater cave then how come it’s not flooded and the other is: are you sure you really did see two other people?”
“Yes, well I must have, I mean it couldn’t have been a dream or anything.”
“I don’t want to imply that your crazy or anything, but your story isn’t the most believable one and it kind of creeps me out.”
“I don’t want to believe it either but I’m just telling you what I saw, so, do you believe me or not?”
John stopped walking and said, “Of course I believe you,” and then he sat down with his back against the hard rocky wall. “What did they look like?”
“Well, I couldn’t really focus, I’ve never fainted so hard, I just remember one was blackish but I don’t think it was his skin color, just his clothes that made him seem that way. Then the other was… it was weird, I want too say its skin was blue, and he was short and crouched over a lot. That’s all I remember.”
The two stopped to think about this peculiar description, then, John said, “We don’t have many choices.”
“About what?”
“About getting out of here, I mean, you do want to get out don’t you?”
“Yeah, but what are the choices?”
“Okay, we can either go out the same way you said the two people went, and try to find your family and risk the chance of letting them see us and getting caught or something, or we stay here looking for a different way to get out.”
“We’ll do both: first, we find my family and make sure their okay, then we can all look for an exit over there, or come back here if we can’t find one.”
The two of them walked toward the dark tunnel that might lead them to their friends and an exit, or possibly into the hands of two suspicious strangers.
Daniel and John crept along the tunnel with their backs to the wet, craggy cave walls. Neither one dared to say a word in the darkness though they both made sure that they were both even with each other.
Daniel was starting to sweat and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was just nervous or because it was all of the sudden becoming more humid.
He hoped the tunnel would end soon but his echoing footsteps told him otherwise. But, to his surprise, they soon reached a new opening and he saw they reason his footsteps echoed; this cavern was huge. It was about twice as large as the one they had come from.
Then, John’s voice distracted him from his awe, “Daniel, there they are!”
“Please tell me it’s the ‘they’ that I hope it is.”
As he joined John he soon realized it was the ones they had been looking for and not the one they were hiding from. There in the corner of the cavern were his mother, Jessica, and Uncle Rob.
For a brief moment Daniel thought this dilemma would all be over, that they would leave the dreadful cave go back home and not have to worry about it again. But that moment of hope was soon smothered by the two things that happened next.
Daniel looked down upon the faces of his lost family and realized they were asleep. Then, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up straight and his blood felt cold he swung quickly around at the sound of two people approaching but needn’t have turned at all because at once he knew who they would be: master and Frawg and They must have heard their footsteps echo.
John also turned and got his first look at the two, “It’s th…,” he said gasping in horror and surprise.
“No, not yet…” Daniel shouted in a voice rising in decibel as his heart was also rising in his chest. He was panicking; he couldn’t leave his family behind.
He saw John was starting to run and when John saw Daniel wasn’t following he turned back and shouted, “Daniel, run…run!”
Master was advancing quickly from the far side of the cavern in long strides. “Frawg leave the cave I’ll take care of them!” They were running out of time. Daniel wanted desperately for the others to wake up but whatever he did they stayed there asleep and he wondered why.
John knew that Daniel didn’t want to leave without his family and could understand but he also knew that master had almost reached them and was raising a menacing staff above his head. John called to him again, “It’s no use!”
Daniel heard and knew it was true. He was about to sprint for his very life when he saw some blurry in front of him, but the thing itself wasn’t blurry it’s just that it was a blur. The best way to describe is that it looked like the heat that is seen rising above a fire.
The blur of heat whizzed by his face at eye level and crashed into the rock wall and exploded. Pieces of the rock flew by Daniel’s face a few of them stinging his face. He screamed and having yet another reason to he ran.
Looking back was no use because he knew right away that master was right behind him and that the blur had come from the staff he was carrying. Daniel and John were trapped and had no choice but to go, once again down the dark tunnel they had come from. Daniel knew though that it would only take them to a dead end.
Daniel ran harder than he could ever have remembered running before. As soon as he was on the other side of the passageway and in the first cave john came running up behind him and, while catching his breath, said, “Daniel, doesn’t the ship look as if it took a nose dive?”
“Sure. Why does it matter?”
“It would have had to come from above wouldn’t it,” was John's simple reply. They both looked up to see the shattered glass dome.
Daniel surprised at how obvious it was and said, “Thank you John, thank you for thinking.”
Without declaring it they both knew what they had to do: climb. They gripped the rock that jutted out and tried to find supports for their feet when another blur went quickly by Daniel’s face and he could feel the intense heat and his eyes watered; master was back. But this blur had not been aimed for him once it was past his face it didn’t crash into the rock but continued upward to where John was and hit a large stone above his head. The stone fell right where John had just placed his hand and his fingers were crushed. If he had not let go right away they would have been broken, so he was now swinging loose with only one hand.
Daniel took a risk to help his friend and let go with his hand that was nearest to John. John was luckily close enough to reach the outstretched hand. Daniel’s adrenaline boosted just long enough for john to grab hold of another stone.
If the cave the cave had not been much wider than it was tall the two would never have reached the top at all but that was not the case and they soon found themselves holding on below the glass that was broken by the last blur sent directly between the two that was so close it blackened the sleeves of their shirts and crashed into the glass but miraculously none of the glass seemed to hit them and it cleared the exit for them.
Daniel heaved himself over the edge with his last bit of strength, john also did so and when they came out they saw that the cave was underground. Daniel’s last thought was, “how am I on dry land,” then he fell asleep.