Secrets of the Realms: Chapter 4: The Invasion

Apologies, what I said probably doesn’t make any sense to you. It’s just difficult for me to communicate what happened that night. It was very traumatic for me. It was the moment that changed my life forever and there was no going back. If you will, allow me to try again. This time, I won’t go into a propostirich gibberish frenzy. Now, where were we? Ah, yes. When Red jumped from his bed and grabbed the rock. 

The ground began to shake as the stone turned a bloody red. No, not just the ground, the entirety of existence shook as soon as Red touched that God forsaken thing. We heard “AAA!!!” Coming from down the hall as the room began to spin and we began to float mid-air. 

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” I cried as loud as I could as I flew. “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING,” Red screamed as he dropped the crystal to the floor, “I JUST TOUCHED THE ROCK!” At that moment, my entire life flashed before my very eyes. That was the moment I realized that my life had been wasted. However, I didn’t have time to contemplate my life. There were more important things to worry about. 

From the crystal came a light that formed a picture. As we slowly spun around this holographic image, it felt like something out of science fiction. “WHAT IS THAT THING!?!?” Said Red at the top of his lungs. I was trying to answer that very same question for myself. The image kept changing. I saw hideous monsters, twisting catacombs, swords and halberds colliding, animals going wild, a silhouette of young women, a lock and a key, and then it showed us four things at the same time. The first was a three dimensional globe of earth. The other three looked to be maps as well though I didn’t recognize any of those places except for one.

Then, we spun faster, and faster, we screamed, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Then all of a sudden we stopped!

Everything thudded to the ground and there was this deafening silence in the air. We sat there for a moment, just to catch our breaths. I reached for the stone, which was still a crimson color, and Red yelled, “NO!” But before I could hear him, I had already touched it. 

Nothing happened though. I was relieved that I did not cause yet another strange and unexplainable catastrophe to happen, although disappointed at the very same time.  

Red looked out our small window, and a look of fear returned to his face as he began to tremble. “Hey Barney?” He said. 

“Yeah Red?”

“Think you could say a prayer?”

At that I looked out of our window and saw something that, before that night, I believed was impossible. It looked to be an old ship that looked to have some almost futuristic technology. But even this technology did not seem to explain why the vessel was flying. 

“I don’t think even God can help us now.” Is what I told him in fear. 

He then looked at me, looked back out the window, and said, “Well, thanks God. Thanks an awful lot.”

That is when the screaming began down the hall. As soon as we ran out our door to see what was happening, the fire alarm went off, but since the sprinklers hadn’t been updated in a minute, rain didn’t fall from the roof as I hope it did for other parts of the building. Children ran past us, fleeing from a menacing shadow illuminated by fire, and the sound of a screech like it came from the bloody devil himself! 

At this, Red and I ran back into our room and slammed the door. “What are we going to do?” I asked. “Quick” he said, “grab your backpack and stuff some things in there. Only the necessities!” So that’s what I did. I grabbed the rock, the Jotter, a flashlight, the picture of my mum I kept next to my bed, and some clothes. I never did see what all he packed that night, except I know for a fact that he packed the pocket knife he made from silverware. I know this, of course, because he used it a few moments later after we had run down the hall, through the fire and into a monkey. 

Yes you heard me right, an ape. I would learn much later, after studying at Oxford, Shiz, and the Turvy school, that this was an albino silverback baboon. Rare in certain places, non-existent in others. With the monkey guarding the path in some sort, Red and I turned around to go then other way but the little devil saw us and with a screech and a laugh it ran after us as we heard screeching and laughter from all over the building. Red then stopped and in a moment of bravery unrivaled, he threw his blade, piercing the ape through the heart. 

We stopped to catch our breath. “What is going on?!” I cried. “I don’t know,” Red replied, “but we have to get out of here.” That's when we heard the screeching again. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear it. 

We ran through flames and smoke as fast as we could. The halls felt like they went on forever with the screaming behind us. We eventually made it to a hall where the sprinklers worked. That was when I tried to justify or explain what was happening. Was it the end of the world? Was this some prank? Was it a nightmare from the lack of sleep? I couldn’t explain it and neither could Red. All we knew was that we could not stay at the orphanage any more. 

Then we heard footsteps. 

And metal.

Step.

Bang.

Step.

Bang.

Step. 

Bang.

From around the corner, a silver cutlass shined in the moonlight. That was all we had to see to know we had to go. So we ran again in the opposite direction. We ran for our lives so fast we didn’t know where we were going. We couldn’t stop running. 

Which, looking back on, may not have been the best idea seeing as a little boy turned the same corner at the same time, and we bumped into each other. 

“Hey, watch where you’re going kid!”, said Red.

The boy, knocked onto his back, was small and looked to be about seven to nine years old. His clothes were old and had patches all over it. His hair had sticks sticking out of it, there were holes in his shoes and he had a satchel around his chest. When the boy looked at us, his eyes went wide, and he started to shed a tear. Without saying a word, the boy grabbed Red’s hand and ran dragging my friend behind him. Of course, I followed. Although it seemed it wasn’t me the boy wanted. 

This child led us through the halls without slowing down for anything, it was like he knew exactly where he was going though I had never seen him around the orphanage before. So we followed him through the chaos of the night. 

We made it to the mess hall, and the front door of the institute was on the other side. I kept running but the boy stopped and shook his head with a worried look. I turned around and looked at Red who shrugged his shoulders. That’s when we heard the yelling and the laughing. 

From under tables and crashing through windows came men with matching tattoos, various swords, loaded flintlocks, and one had an eyepatch. These men, for you to understand what I saw, could only be explained with one word…

Pirates. 

The boy pulled out a slingshot and loaded it with a piece of coal. “Give us the rock,” said a man with a metal leg. This man was strange because he seemed to have almost modern technology on him, different from his friends. At this, the little boy did something with his fingers that I didn’t think little boys knew how to do.  I won’t lie, my friends, that made me laugh loudly even though the situation was terrifying. 

In response to the offensive gesture, the pirates all charged at the boy while screaming profanities that could only belong to a sailor. But the boy met these adversaries each with their own flying epic of coal. The boy was so fast reloading and firing it was glorious! No pirate was left standing. Was this the same scared little boy we ran into in the hallway? 

I didn't have time to reflect on this question because the building was still burning down and had many people inside who apparently wanted to kill us.

 About thirty minutes later, we stood atop a hill in the woods surrounding the orphanage as we looked down and saw me and Red’s home burn