The God's Game

Abandoned

The orb of golden light flickered and dimmed.

"Its going to fall back in !! "

River rose through the searing pain in his blistering legs and dived from their hideout, like a panther prouncing on a prey .

World seemed to slow down and melt away around him.

Without having Xola's devine power to levitate it , the orb's light died out and it fell on to the stoned floor. It bounced and rolled , seconds away from falling back in to the pit of fire it emerged from.

River threw himself across the floor ,falling on his broken shoulder but managed to grab the orb before it fell over the brink.

The orb was hot.

There was an omnious hiss as the globe instantly  liquefied the flesh of his palm,leaving a gruesome trail of melted skin in its wake . The stench of scorched flesh hit his nostrils once more. His hand was smoking.

River Verlice had managed to successfully wreck all four of his limbs within a span of short one hour.

He laid there incapacitated when the whistle of the spear slicing through air came again. It was undoubtedly aimed at him. But he had already exhausted himself and could not move another inch.

The clatter of metal hitting metal rang above his head . He turned his head to see Raven Alistair's black boots beside him. His vision was blurring but he could vaguely make out a glare of a golden sword in his hand.

"What is fuck is wrong with you!!" Raven screamed, equal parts worried and angry. "Your hand is melting you motherfucker! Its literally oozing !"

"Its fine " River croaked " Its numb"

He wanted to stay awake. Solina was here, determined to kill whoever that wished to take away the cursed scrap metal.  They had to escape. He had to stay awake and be useful. But his body was gradually shutting down.

He heard metal scarping on each other and Raven's laboured breath.

He had to get up. He couldnt lay there like a useless idiot.

He heard more noises but his sluggish brain would not register them properly.

River felt a sudden sharp pain like someone was penetrating his heart  a freshly forged sword that had not yet cooled down.

He had to get up . He had to help .

*           *             *              *             *         *
River dreamt of many things.

He dreamt of war.

People fell dead like flies. Corpses heaped up in mountains. Rivers ran red.

He dreamt of plague.

Anguished cries of the sick. More dead people. Foul stench of rotting flesh.

He dreamt and he dreamt. He couldnt point out where one scene ended and another started. They all blurred and swirled together behind his eyes. He dreamt of people he has not met, places he has not been to.

He dreamt.

*           *           *           *        *        *        *
River forced his eyelids open.

It was dusk.

He did not know where he was.

He was lying under a tree , its branches gently swaying in the evening breeze above him.

He was ,surprisingly ,alive.

He laid there for a long while, as still as a deadman . Not a thing stirred around him. He laid until the numbness of his body passed and he gradually regained the feeling of his arms and legs.