The Smiling Sword Chapter 8: Chapter 8: Death Game

Read chapter 8 of The Smiling Sword by IchorX on NovelPedia.

Death Game "AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!!!" "WHAT - THE - FUCK!!!??" "Hang on to something!" Mist calls, but there's nothing to hang on to. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Neo and Ronin scream at the same time, cartwheeling through the air beside me. I reach out midair and grab Neo's arm, holding him still, albeit upside down. Thankfully, I'm falling feet first, but the dark walls are going by too fast for me to do anything. Wind lashes against my skin as we plummet. I would scream, but I'm too busy trying to stop myself from puking up my insides. And in the next second, I feel the strangest feeling. "Sword!!" Mist yells, her voice sounding faraway. "DON'T GET SPLIT UP!!" Artee's voice pierces through. "HANG ON TO EACH OTHER!!" Elemental reaches out and grabs a handful of my collar midair, choking me. Artee grabs Ronin, who snags Kino. Mist reaches out between Kino and me, and grabs a handful of Kino's hair, who starts to protest. "Grab my hand…!" she says, stretching out hers towards me. I reach out, but there's barely a few inches between us. Then, suddenly, it feels like something shifts around us, my body gets propelled on its own, and Mist starts flying in the opposite direction. "GUYS!!" Artee yells. They disappear rapidly into the dark, and the world turns into a whirling blur of grey and black. All I can feel is my hand clamped around Neo's arm, and Elemental's grip on my already torn shirt. For a few seconds, it feels like I'm being tossed around in a washing machine, then I slam against something painful and solid, and every bone in my body grinds in protest. My vision swims and my skull throbs. My head falls backward onto solid ground with a thump. "Uwwek," Neo says somewhere to my left, and then throws up. Besides me, Elemental falls slowly onto his back, panting raggedly and coughing. We lie there, struggling waiting for the aftershock clears up. Eventually I prop myself groggily onto my elbows. "What the fuck was that?" I demand, voice bouncing in pitch. "Don't talk to me," Elemental warbles, clasping his throat. "I'm dying." "I'm dead," Neo says, lying flat on his face. "Where's the others?" I ask, ignoring Neo. Climbing shakily to my feet, Elemental pushes himself up using my shoulder. "Don't know." I glance at him. His face looks even more pale and strained in the dim blue light, and there are huge black welts under his eyes from exhaustion. I'm surprised he hasn't collapsed yet from hunger and fatigue with that normal human body of his. "Any idea what just happened?" I ask, looking around, and seeing that we're in a completely new part of the cavern. It's littered with huge boulders mixed with smaller rocks everywhere, built up into piles all around, like something blew up and the cave collapsed. "Did a cave-in happen?" I wonder aloud. "Couldn't care less?" Neo rasps, like he's been gargling with sandpaper. "Shouldn't be asking what the heck that spatial warp was?" "…the Labyrinth…?" Elemental murmurs. "What? Like a maze?" "…in… in a myth, there was this maze built by a king under an island, which shifts and changes without warning. You can be walking in one section at some point, then suddenly get thrown into another or get crushed by the walls…" "Oh," I say, bewildered. "I see." Never crossed my mind that Elemental was the type of guy to get into all those pointless myths and legends - he didn't exactly strike me as someone who'd be poring over old texts all the time. "Never heard it before." For a second, he stares at me, and I catch a strange look in his eyes. Then it's gone and he says, "Yeah, you won't've heard of it. It's not a well-known myth." "So you're saying this place is like the Labyrinth of your… myths? Shifts places randomly at different times?" "Yes," he agrees. "Though we still don't know anything. How large this place is, where we are, whether or not this is the same cave, where the others ended up…" Suddenly, next to us, Neo springs up. "Neo?" "I heard something," he says. "While I was lying dow