Blood of the Damned Chapter 1 - Trapped, Part 1

"What in the..." Eleanor Kelly, more commonly called Ellie, gasped as she stumbled backward. In front of her, the massive figure rose and approached her, ready to strike. He brought down his sword heavily, and Ellie only barely escaped the blow by rolling quickly to her side. With no hesitation, she jumped to her feet and ran away, letting her feet carry her as far and as fast as they could. As quickly as she could move, however, she could sense the presence of the monster closing the gap between them.
She tripped over nothing, her excitement and fear catching up with her faster than the monster. She tried to get to her feet again, but her shoes were smoking from the friction of them against the pavement below. She rolled over, groaning at the pain and staring in morbid fear up at the monster, finally giving up. As the blade came down, she wished to herself that she had gotten to say goodbye.
The screams vibrated off the walls and carried far down the cavern, causing Derek and his friends to stop in their tracks. Derek looked behind and scanned the crowd for a missing face. All of a sudden, the knowledge struck into his head.
"Where's Ellie?!" He gasped, and was accompanied by nervous and anxious chatter from the group. Only one person didn't say a word, and that one person stared blankly into space, having been hit the hardest by the sudden loss. Derek approached him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"It's fine, Max." He said, "We won't leave without her." With that, Derek looked towards the still talking crowd. "Everybody, listen to me!" He talked again when he noticed people were starting to pay attention. "We cannot leave here without Ellie. She's been a dear friend to all of us. We won't let this go unnoticed." With that, he drew his swords and ran back down the hall from which they had come. The footsteps echoing behind him were proof that he was being followed.
After many turns, Derek stopped to catch his breath. He had run nearly a mile, and another fifty feet ahead was the shadowy figure of a girl. It was too dark to see any details. He looked behind himself to notice that everyone else was not there yet. They would find him, he thought. As the figure got closer, it was even clearer that he was staring at his lost teammate.
All of a sudden, she started to tilt to the side, and Derek knew immediately she was falling. He dropped his swords and ran towards her, catching her right before she hit the ground. Something was peculiar about this. His hands were wet and sticky from something on her body. He sniffed the air, and as he had dreaded, it was rank with the smell of blood, both fresh and old. He looked back behind him. Still, they had not caught up with him. It was up to him to save her.
He lay her down on her back on the ground. Her eyes were open but closing and Derek feared he did not have enough time. He pressed two fingers to Ellie's stomach, searching in the dark for the wound. He found it, and he had to stop his fingers from falling inside. Another peculiarity lay about this. He gently slid the hand under her back and noticed a hole in the same exact place. Ellie had not been cut, he thought. She had been impaled.
His worst fears were brought nearer and nearer. She was dying in his arms, and he could not let that happen. Derek removed his bandana and pressed it tightly to the open wound on her stomach. He had done little more before he began to panic. He didn't know how to treat the wounded. How was he going to do this? He could feel each individual tear as it slid down his face, and he caressed her cheek. It was cold to the touch.
Derek heard footsteps off in the distance. It was a lot of footsteps, like an angry mob had come to finish him. He knew who it was though. He ran back to meet them. Sure enough, every one of his friends was still there. He searched through the crowd, pushing people aside, looking for the medic of the group. A couple people look frantic, almost scared at the sights of my rushed actions. Others withdrew quickly, sensing the fact that there was a liquid coating my arms.
Eventually, he found his man. I took him by the wrist and led him back to the body. He was not fighting Derek, but he spent most of the hustled walk asking what he was doing. However, when he put it aside and caught a glance of the body, he nearly covered his eyes in terror. He released him and knelt down with him by the ever-worsening Ellie. He looked straight into Max's eyes.
"She's dying. You have to do something." He said. It was all he could manage to say. Max was nervous to the point of shaking by the time he fumbled open his medicine kit. It was in the air that we were losing her before their eyes. By the time everything was set up around her, she was gone. They both stopped moving and doing anything, needing time to take in their collective loss. Derek tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling. They had to get out of there before the inevitable happens.
Derek stood up and ran back to the entrance, where the group awaited them. He scanned the audience, and sure enough, everybody was paying attention.
"Does anybody know how to get out of here?" He asked, dreading what may lie in these caverns. Everybody looked around before a hand shot up. The crowd parted so he could see who it was. A small petite girl with pale-blonde hair and startling green eyes remained. At once he recognized her. Everyone in the group had judged her, and classified her as strange, but that was with good reason. She had some mystical powers. What they did, they all had yet to find out.
"I know," she stated innocently. "I brought some yarn to lay the trail. Follow me." She turned around and ran back through the caverns. She could not be any older than ten, but she had outsmarted them all. They followed her through the winding twisting caverns, the white yarn barely visible in the almost absolute darkness, yet the girl had all knowledge of each individual turn they had to take.
The cavern started getting lighter. They were getting close to the entrance, and excitement started boiling in the air. The yarn was clear now, and everybody was thinking the same thing; the little ten-year-old girl had saved all their lives. By the time the girl took another turn, the group was talking amongst themselves out of excitement.
"Uh oh." They heard the little girl say from around the corner. They stopped, their rush of excitement coming to a violent halt. They hesitantly turned around the corner and saw the little girl looking down at the black floor, the plain black floor. It took Derek a moment, but then the knowledge hit him like the rock proceeding to smash against his head: They were trapped.
Derek blinked his eyes rapidly to remove the tears of pain that escaped his eyes, blurring his vision. He stood up, and everything seemed lopsided. It took him a minute to get everything settled, but when he did, everything was clear. All around him was a purple bubble. The only other occupant of this purple field was an eight-foot tall demon-like figure, with a buzz saw for a right hand and a pole arm in his left. Immediately, Derek turned and ran the other way.