55 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
55 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
Calvin woke to a complete darkness.
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His mind seemed thick, and his head pounded.
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The blow to his head came back to his mind.
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Betrayed, by a guard he'd trusted.
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Somehow brainwashed by the New Meadowlark, or something like that.
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Calvin stamped his hoof against the ground, and listened to the echo off the walls.
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It sounded like he was in a large chamber, which Calvin hoped would be good as far as air was concerned.
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But he didn't know how long he'd been unconscious, and wasn't sure what the signs of lack of air would be.
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He touched his head.
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The helm had been stolen, and he assumed the sword had gone with it.
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He still had his pack, which had a bit of food and water.
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And, Calvin remembered, an electric torch.
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After the initial shock to his eyes, the light revealed that he was in a relatively smooth room, around twenty feet one way and thirty feet in the other.
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The ceiling was quite tall, and Calvin couldn't quite make out how far above the chamber went.
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Calvin walked to one end and walked around the walls of his chamber, feeling the stone.
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It was smooth all the way around.
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The lack of doors made sense if they'd had the Pathbreaker seal him in, which meant he was probably completely sealed in.
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Calvin reflexively kicked back in anger, and hit the wall behind him.
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A sharp pain bounced up his leg, and when he turned to look, the wall was unchanged.
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Even that was ineffective.
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He turned off the torch to preserve the battery, sank to the ground and began to sob.
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Calvin once again woke to a complete darkness.
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Apparently, he'd managed to cry himself into sleep.
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No obvious improvement to his situation presented itself, which meant he needed to find a way to do it himself.
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He thought about the Meadowlark manual, and started the breathing exercise again.
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His breath stilled, he pictured the smell of a grassy hill, the flow of water and the tight grip of roots.
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He felt himself being pulled in by a wave of yaks spreading across a plain, and he pictured the Haven as their destination.
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He held on to that image, and tried to avoid focussing on the pain that his head was insistently pounding out.
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He felt his hooves tingling as they sank into the stone below him, and he felt the sinews of his legs vibrate as he stood tall.
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The stone under him revealed a hidden warmth underneath, a vein of life or power or something good, and he tried to reach out to touch it, but found it out of grip.
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Straining, he pulled at it, pawing at it wildly, desperately.
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Unsuccessful, he changed his plan, and tried to push more warmth into the stone.
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He felt it sneaking out of him like a thread.
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The thread of power reached for the deeper well below, until wrapping itself around the vein.
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Calvin pulled on it, and after a small initial resistance, it came flooding back into him.
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Calvin opened his eyes, and turned on the flashlight.
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He was standing where he remembered, and he didn't feel anything.
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A few taps on the ground again felt like nothing unusual.
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Although, nothing unusual _was_ unusual, right?
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His rear leg no longer hurt, and his head felt clear, and pain-free.
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In fact, Calvin felt better than he'd felt in a long time.
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Somehow he'd managed to pull some sort of life from somewhere beyond the stone, and it had healed him.
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Calvin flipped through the manual again, and started to look at the next exercise.
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