Fiery Lands and Stormy Seas (Pokemon Watty Award Winner 2014)

Chapter 24

CHRIS

 

            He could smell his prey, and taste its fear.  The rocks couldn’t save the juicy Numel, he would find it cornered soon enough.  He was hungry, it had been three days since he had eaten… and he was tired of man-flesh.  Yet there was no vegetation on the hot black rock; he had to eat what he could. 

            The men who hunted him tasted bland, there was not enough meat on them, and they were more trouble than they were worth.  Their pointy sticks and long shiny claws of steel bit into him.  He hated the shiny claws. However, he overcame each one of them eventually, and he had already gnawed them all to the bone.  He was thin and his muscles had disappeared now, but his hunger made him swift and strong. 

            He crawled along the black rocks, sniffing at the air again.  It was close.  Behind the next rock.  There was no way the Numel could outrun him.  He silently stalked up the rock, and his prize bolted, or it tried to anyway.  In an instant, he shot a blast of water at the terrified little Pokémon.  The air was dry up here, and his blasts weren’t as powerful or as full as he would like, but it was enough.  The poor creature was drenched, and it was having a hard time moving, the aim was true.  

            As he crawled on all fours with his belly close to the ground, his prey whimpered and cried out for help.  Help from its herd, or its family.  I had a family once, he remembered.  But the thoughts disappeared from his head.  His huge shadow was cast over the little Numel.  Its eyes were panicking.  It tried to get back on his feet when he slammed his long blue arm on its shoulder. 

            His mouth was slobbering with lust, and the Numel cried out one last time…

            Chris Marsh woke with a start, drenched in sweat.  He looked down at his arm, expecting to see blue, but it was only in a cast again.  He remembered where he was.

            Solomon Forrest, Prince of Fortree, had ransomed him and his uncle’s two guards.  He was safe somewhere in the great woods that covered the Central Highlands.  But am I a prisoner?  Is Hector Safe? And Sarah… A thousands questions swirled through his head at once. 

            Noticing that he was awake, one of the green-clothed guards who must have been watching him went out of the small wooden room that he was being kept in. 

            The King of Slateport sat in silence staring at his hurt arm.  Apollo was right, he thought.  It hadn’t healed all the way yet.  The way those Mirage Desert scouts had treated him, his arm was likely worse.  It was stiff from rest now, and it hurt to move it.  At least the bone is mended.

            It was half an hour, or an hour, or two hours later when two green clad guards had entered again.  Following them into the room was Solomon Forrest: short, muscular, in his late twenties or early thirties, with almond-shaped eyes and black hair knotted in a bun behind his head.  His Sceptile with uncaring eyes followed close behind. 

            “Good evening, King Chris Marsh,” he said. 

            Evening? “How long have I slept?” he asked his savior, or captor.   

            “You’ve been out for a day and a half,” he said.  “The dreaming potion let us treat your arm better.  My sister, Susan, has already been in to change the wrappings and stretch your arm twice.  The bone is mended, but it’s the stiffness and swelling that you’re feeling now.”