The Arena - The Moon Trilogy - Book #2

Chapter twenty-three:

With no more questions for the newcomer, the group fell into a heavy silence.

Clarity found herself strangely bored. After everything that had happened, her mind had raced until it couldn't anymore. Every thought that entered her head was a repeat of something already there, so she shook them all away. And with the lack of activity, inside and out of her own head, a void opened where there was simply nothing.

Lacking anything else to do, Clarity decided to study Johnny in his bizarrely familiar dragon shape. He wasn't as frightening as she had first thought, but he wasn't like anything she had seen before, so her first impression had been fear.

His eyes seemed even bluer when he was a dragon, with tiny specks of grey that shone out like stars against a night sky. Clarity imagined that he could see rather well in the dark.

Once again she marveled at the size of his wings. Folded against his back, they seemed almost small—perhaps the same size as Alex's wings. But when he'd spread them out in the coliseum, they were huge. She wasn't the best at gauging length with just sight alone, but her best guess was that his wingspan was at least twelve feet across.

His scales were black but somehow metallic. A deep grey sheen overlaid the pitch darkness. They overlapped each other tightly, and if she hadn't just seen his shoulder get charred pretty much clean off, she would have thought they were impenetrable.

She was nearly mesmerized as her eyes drifted down his spine and to the very tip of his tail. Then she looked back to his head, only to realize that his eyes were locked on her. She immediately snapped her gaze away.

Her eyes slowly drifted to the floor. She studied the metal that was coated in a thick layer of fine dust. The light was dim and had a blueish quality to it, which gave the dust the appearance of movement, like so many tiny maggots. She looked away.

She focused on the walls. The stone looked almost wet, as though the vast expanse of ocean was somehow reclaiming its place inside the prison. Though it was a bit disturbing that the walls would be wet, it was still nothing much to look at.

She idly searched for something to stare at that wasn't a person.

She should have expected that she wouldn't find anything. It was a cell, after all.

Her eyes continued to rove across the room, but they became sluggish. Her eyelids gradually dropped closed. Her head nodded back against the cold, stone wall. Soon enough, she was no longer aware of the dusty floor, Johnny, or the boring stone walls.

She was in a black room.

The floor looked reflective, like it was wet.

She couldn't see any walls. The blackness went on forever.

She was only vaguely aware of the fact that it was a dream. She could hardly remember the terror that she had felt so recently, in a room just like the one she now found herself in.

Was it the same room? She didn't think so. She felt calm. It wasn't like the other black room. It was peaceful. Safe. The evil August was nowhere to be found. In fact, there wasn't any August at all, except in her mind.

The edges of her mind were filled with the past times in the black rooms. Every memory was filled with August. Where is August? He's usually in the black room, so why isn't he here now?

Clarity spun around, hoping to see him somewhere, anywhere. He was always able to help. If she could just find August, everything would be better. He would help them escape.

All around her, the air started to buzz. Black and white specks swam back and forth in front of her. The air had somehow become pixelized

A shadowy figure materialized just beyond the curtain of swirling static. She stepped closer to see who it was.