The Quest for Flight: ch 4 part 2

Clumbo picked up the sword, and followed Chat, he just hoped this wasn’t a trap.

“You wonder if I am leading you to a trap young Clumbo? I can see it in your face, your eyes can tell me many things, well I must tell you I would never do such a thing, and you can ask your little shape shifter friend if you don’t believe me, I would never enter a Preaver cave voluntarily.”

“What does Chat mean I can ask you?” Clumbo whispered to Shifty.

“Well I was on the run from my own kind once too, they hated anything different, anything was killed whether it could talk like me, or it couldn’t shape shift properly, and I found a cave and Chat entering it, I knew he could talk, but I asked whether he could talk earlier because I believed him dead, because when he entered the cave, the silly bugger tried asking them to stop hunting him, then they all jumped at him.

I was hiding behind a rock, watching as they all swung there tails towards his stomach, one hit him, but it only scraped him, he managed to run outside, but although the spike had only scraped him, it had made a nasty gash in his side, you see the scar there?”

“Yes”

There was a twenty centimetre long gash on his side, it looked fairly deep for what Shifty described as a ‘scrape’, and Clumbo was starting to have second thoughts of entering this cave. The spikes seemed even sharper when he thought of them, so he quickly tried to banish it. Soon they came to a Rock, a big rock about 10 times the size of Clumbo.

“Welcome, to a cave of Preavers” Chat exclaimed.

Everyone looked at him like he had just told a bad joke

“Um, where?” Luke asked.

“Well only Preavers can see it, kind of a safety thing, the only Preaver Cave which is visible to all is the Molocath, or the main one to those sailors, as it is known. There’s so many Preavers there, and they often get hungry… Disgusting animals I say” Chat replied.

“Well two things” Clumbo said “First, you just said you were a disgusting animal, seeming technically you are a Preaver and…

“And two, how do we get in?” Luke butted in.

“You took the words right out my mouth”

“Well, if one of you holds on to me,” Chat said “and someone on to him and so on, you will be taken in with me, but if one person lets go he and the people behind him will be split in two” Chat replied. “That is not recommended” he added.

Clumbo walked to the left of Chat, not wanting to grab onto his spiked tail, he felt Luke grab his belt, and looked back to see Shifty had become a strange animal that Clumbo had never seen before. The only visible hair was on the top of his head, and it was dark brown, like his eyes. He was roughly the same size as Clumbo, but had some weird things at the end of his arms, they were not paws, but they were slightly similar, although they had less hair than a paw, and they were like five sticks, four of them were next to each other, but one was coming out the side of the end of each arm. It stood on two legs like Clumbo, and it had a strange skin, kind of pale looking.

“What are you?” Clumbo asked anxiously

“A Human! Like the sailors who looked after Chat when he was young. Not a very well known animal, but extremely intelligent and every one contains large amounts of magic, and most are well trained in the magic arts. Sadly there are not many left, I believe this wizard you seek, and all the others in the tower, are indeed Human.”

“And what’s that thing sticking out the side?” Luke said

“Oh, that’s a thumb, come in very useful, especially when holding…” but he didn’t get to finish his sentence, Chat had suddenly ran forwards and all three of them were flung forward, plunging into a darkness they knew nothing of, and possibly to certain death.