Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens) by Heath Pfaff Read Free Book Online Page B

took a huge gasp of air and sat up. I was laying on the forest floor with the newly risen sun shining down on me. I was just ten feet from the clearing and my cabin. It was over. I checked my body and found myself intact, but not entirely whole." Shawl unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt and exposed his collar as well as one of his shoulders. There was a partial line of puckered, scarred flesh circling part of his neck, and his shoulder had a similar scar that circled all the way around the joint where his shoulder connected his arm to his torso. "I have one of those around every leg and every arm." He added gravely.
    "I did what any sane man would do at that point. I ran. I headed not for my cabin, but for the dock. I grabbed the boat I'd built for myself, put it in the water, and started to row my way for the mainland. I didn’t care what I left behind. I was never going back to Dreamer's Isle again. I'm not sure how far I made it, but it wasn't far. I blacked out, and when I woke up I was on the porch of my cabin. I was still terrified, so I did the exact same thing. I ran for the dock and found my boat in the exact same place it had been stowed before as though I'd never pulled it out. I quickly pulled it to the water, settled in, and began to row for the mainland. Again, I blacked out and woke on the porch of my cabin. Three more times I repeated the attempt to escape, and each time I woke back on the porch to my cabin. By that point it was too late in the day to risk another trip out to the boat. I wasn't going out into the woods after dark. I locked myself in my cabin and stayed there until the next day, upon which I tried to escape three more times. I couldn't leave. Over the next few years I tried to escape on a few occasions, but the result is always the same. As long as I stay here and continue my life as normal there is nothing wrong. The minute I try to leave, I am again returned to the cabin. I cannot escape this island. I don't think I truly survived my night out in the mists, but neither did I completely die. I think the mists are keeping me here, hoping someday to finish what they began."
    "Under other circumstances I might find that difficult to believe." Kassa commented. Haley had been thinking something very similar herself. Before starting her adventure with Xandrith, everything that had happened to her recently would have felt like some kind of twisted fairy tale.
    "Even retelling it from memory doesn't make it any more believable." Shawl said with a shrug. "I'm not sure how much of it really happened and how much was just some madness inflicted by the mists, but the memories are clear. Even after years of time I can still see the events as though they happened only last week. One thing I know is true, however. I cannot leave this island. I don't know how my boat gets back to shore, or how I end up back at the cabin, but it's always the same."
    "Maybe it's a delusion?" Kassa spoke up suddenly. "Maybe you only believe you're trying to exit the island, but in reality you're just sitting down on the porch and blacking out? That would explain why your boat is always back on shore."
    Johndin shook his head. "No, I considered that possibility as well. One of the times I tried to escape I took some floating fishing lures with me and dropped them in the water with lead sinkers attached to hold them in place. I managed to drop four of them before I blacked out, and when I came back to check after waking up on the porch, the lures were floating in a straight line out from shore. I had started across that stretch of water, but the island won't let me go."

Haley wasn't certain why Johndin was giving up on the idea of escape so easily. "We have to try anyway. It would be stupid not to try. With Kassa and I to watch you, we'll find a way to get you off the island."
    Kassa was already nodding her agreement. "For all you know you could be blacking out and paddling yourself back here, Johndin. With us along, we