Chapter 55
55 Wand Search
“Great!” Nikki said excitedly, “We’ll come up with some sort of plan.” She turned around and walked off into the cave with her hands behind her back, leaving Rin standing there alone with me and Tisiah.
“I guess follow us,” I said nervously, turning around to follow Nikki.
Rin was walking a bit slower than we were walking but he quickly caught up with us as he started following behind us again. I looked back at Rin and saw him staring back at me with a confused look on his face as well. Soon enough we entered the deep of the cave, where there was a fire that was still swaying on the ground and crackling.
Rin looked over at me with his brows furrowed, and I could tell he didn’t understand why we would have a fire in this long cave when there were plenty of caves outside the forest that we could use as well.
“It’s fine,” Nikki said as she turned to look at us again, “I want to use this fire to light torches. That way we can be even more prepared.”
Tisiah gave a quick nod and then turned back around to stare into the fire. I was watching him as he stared into the flames. He was looking really peaceful right now; not like he was upset about anything.
“It looks sort of like the one we made with Matt and Mari,” Tisiah said. “Maybe its possibly here, or it’s similar.”
I could see Rin turn his head to look back at Tisiah when he heard him talking about Matt and Mari, but he didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He just stood there quietly, not saying anything else.
“You’re right,” Nikki said after she saw Rin’s reaction, “I think it is the place. Let’s search for the wands, then.”
.....
Nikki led the way through the cave as we searched for wands again. The cave felt more mysterious as we walked, like something was telling us to look over to our left or right every now and then, but we weren’t sure what it meant. But we searched all over the ground for them anyway, as we knew we had to find them soon because it was getting darker in the cave with each passing minute.
As I continued walking, I felt something, like a linear structure of a stick.
Wands.
“Hey guys, there’s wands here!” I shouted, running over to where I saw them lying on the floor of the cave.
Nikki ran over to where I was pointing at and knelt down to pick them up.
“These are wands!” Nikki said excitedly, “How did you know?”
I looked at Nikki and saw her grinning ear to ear at me. “Well, I felt them when I accidentally stepped on them,” I explained, “I thought it was just another part of the cave but I could tell that it wasn’t.”
Tisiah and Rin walked over to where Nikki and I were standing as we showed them the wands on the floor of the cave.
“Well,” Rin said, “Let’s see what we can do now that we’ve got these.”
Tisiah ordered, “Let’s rest for now since we found these. But since we got them, we’ll have enough to fight the whole group.”
We all nodded in agreement with what Tisiah said as we set our torches on the floor next to us. It was getting darker in this cave as we walked deeper into it, but I could tell by Tisiah’s face that he wasn’t really worried about that. Clearly he’s not worried about a lot of things, I thought to myself as I smiled at him.
Nikki, Rin and I were all sitting in a circle around Tisiah who was lying down on his back on the cave floor. He was taking a small break from walking and running around, which was understandable.
“This is what I needed,” I said with a relieving sigh, “Now that I have these wands I feel like I have some power now.”
Rin smiled as he leaned over to me and touched my arm lightly before he pulled his hand away, “That’s good to hear,” he said, “Now you can actually be useful in this contest.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I responded, feeling a bit offended at Rin’s remark. I don’t know why, but it just made me feel like I couldn’t do anything useful at all. It was frustrating to me, but I just let it go.
Tisiah got up off his back and stretched out his arms as he looked towards the cave ceiling and started laughing loudly, “Well then you guys have got this whole WAC contest figured out now.”
“Pretty much, I think,” Nikki said, “I don’t know about you two.”
“What?” Rin said as he looked at Nikki and Tisiah, “What do you mean? You’ve figured out how to win already?!”
Tisiah looked over at Rin and then laughed even harder than before as he looked at Nikki who was also smiling now, “Imagine using all these wands at the same time, they would be blown away!”
Nikki and Tisiah started laughing hysterically as they looked at Rin and then at each other.
Rin looked at us all and then at Tisiah with an amused expression on his face, “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said as he looked over at Tisiah, “although I think I have an idea we can somehow kill them at the same time. We just have to use our surroundings to our advantage and think about it carefully.”
Tisiah stopped laughing and looked at Rin with an inquiring look on his face. Nikki stopped laughing as well and looked at Rin and Tisiah with a strange look on her face. I could tell she was confused about what Rin had said, but she was also starting to understand what Rin had meant. She just wasn’t sure if she wanted to believe what she was thinking about right now.
“Okay,” Nikki said, “so what do we do?”
Rin walked over to where Tisiah was lying on his back and stood next to him on the ground as he looked down at him and gestured him to get up. “See those trees above us?” he said. “We can hide there and wait for them to come, then some of us can jump down into combat and use our wands at the same time.”
Tisiah got up from the ground and walked over towards where Rin was standing next to him. Rin pointed his arm up towards where he was looking and then pointed to himself before he said something else that really made me wonder if he was serious or not. “I can take on one of them on my own. I can take two of them at the same time if they come down into the cave with us.”
Nikki and Tisiah both stared up towards where Rin was pointing to and they looked like they were starting to believe what he had said, “Okay,” Nikki said as she looked at Tisiah, “Let’s try that idea.”
Soon enough, it became sunset which meant this was the third day in a row, just in the WAC contest though. For most of the time we were just talking about how crazy everything has been, but it made sense in my head now. The more time we spent together as a group, the easier it was to get along with everyone. It seemed like the three of us really enjoyed spending time together and didn’t want to be separated from each other ever again.
I could tell that Tisiah wasn’t really paying attention to what we were saying about everything. He seemed more worried, and just out there by himself in his own world. I wanted to go over to him and sit with him to make sure he was okay but I knew he wouldn’t want me near him. It seemed like he just wanted to be by himself and have some time alone to think about his own thoughts and maybe clear his mind.
I would think the same thing as well, I know I wanted some time alone as well, to think about how I felt about Rin and Nikki, as well as how I felt about all of this. I still wasn’t sure what I was feeling or thinking about what we had been doing or what Rin said about using our surroundings to our advantage.
“Okay, it might be soon Malachi’s team of like sixty might be arriving here soon,” Tisiah said, “You guys ready for them?”
We all nodded our heads at him.
“Yeah,” Rin said, “We’ll be ready for them.”
Preview:
As soon as sunset had passed and night had begun, we all headed to the trees that Rin pointed out for us before we had gone into the cave. Based on Rin’s info, they usually passed here at nighttime, but only a couple of them had actually entered the forest and come to the clearing where we were waiting for them. But now that we were in these trees, we were going to try to surprise them when they came to the clearing. We were going to attack them and hopefully win the WAC contest.
It seemed as if it was only a gathering of maybe five and not much were there but it was only a matter of time before we could. The night came and the crickets added to the suspense. I took many deep breaths, trying to calm down and relax so that my body would react faster if there were any sudden attacks or anything else like that.