06-27-2008, 07:58 PM
Chapter 1
So it begins.
For fifteen years now, I’ve been trying at a ‘normal’ life. I’ve lived as a young girl named Ariel. I’ve taken from her this name, the role in the family as an older sister and loving daughter, and the friends she would’ve had, all in the name of escaping; escaping from a crumbling world to one of relative safety without the same magical charm; from Orlion to Earth.
Many things had gone wrong and I had to get away from those that would do me harm. The fetus that I had stolen the life of wouldn’t have survived as it was. My ‘mother’ was a heavy smoker and it would’ve caused complications with the baby otherwise. It would’ve been the end of my ‘little sister’ as well if I’d not taken measures to prevent this.
My ‘father’ is a man who has great charisma and is well respected if not well known. He works on electronic boxes known as computers for a living. Nothing grand or special, and yet still it seems to be tiring. Even so, he’s always scheming up some invention, and helping around the house, making the most of everything no matter what.
My mother, while less admirable in her actions, is still a lovely woman. She works in a cafeteria, managing the food that I and my peers will eat at school… well she’d never actually done that at my school, but she’s still a lunch lady manager. Her personality has her in a constantly foul mood, and a need to clean is clear through her actions. She is a very neat and organized person, so my laid back attitude, wrought on by at least a millennia of life, tends to upset her. Just the same, the woman is my biological mother, and I care for her.
My sister is a full two years younger than my physical body, and quite the embicile. She could be smart, if only she’d make the effort to learn as much as she could. She was just about to turn thirteen, going into seventh grade, when things started to roll down hill.
It was the beginning of the school year, tenth grade for me, and all summer I’d had to deal with all kinds of shit. You see, the previous year, a group of friends of mine had decided that they wanted to meddle with magic, to see what it was all about. They should thank their lucky stars that I’d been with them at the time. I played ‘the summoner’ in their little group, able to ‘summon’ things from the other worlds, and put them under my control.
Tyler, the instigator of the whole affair, played the ‘barbarian’ with great strength and instincts, as well as ‘the navigator’, ‘guiding’ our little group along.
Matt had liked to believe he was a ‘poisoner’ and his scratch was loaded with poison that was harmful towards those he wounded. All because a single laceration he’d given to Tyler had begun to swell and sting predictably.
Alex had been the unknown, possibly a necromancer in training, or a witch hunter in waiting. Either way he proposed a lot of confusion within the group, often referred to as Bunny by Lufarea.
Lufarea was considered the ‘oracle’ and could tell what a person was in a past life, swiftly weaving fantasies about Tyler having been a god in a past life named Nile, god of power. She informed me that I’d been a black dragon, a creature of Lore, the goddess of Love. Matt had been one of Tyler’s minions, and she was a wolf trapped in human form. All of this was bull as far as I was concerned, because I’d never had the chance to allow my soul to be recycled more than this one time, and even I had, Arne and I would know every last past life we would’ve been through.
This whole thing had happened during the middle of the second semester, and during that short time, Tyler had stirred up no end of trouble, claiming to have a certain ‘sense’. Matt it seemed had a small bit of natural sight and could see the weaker demons that resided in this world. And then of course, Sarah had been involved with my magic for years. My impulsive naturally and unruly young tongue had me telling her more than I should have.
I got Sarah involved, but the others had gotten themselves involved… still, I’d played along, so I was as much to blame as they were.
Matt and I had played sweet hearts for a time too, really very boring. I’ve had far more entertaining men over the years, though none of them had lasted very long under my unyielding power… though there was that one… Any way. We played lovey-dove for a short time, and he was the one to end it through ignoring me repeatedly. And then we went back out again, only to end it once more; a very pointless relationship that had only served for minor entertainment. Much of the drama between us had occurred during the time when magics were running through the air. I’d even gone out with Alex in between the relationship, lasting only three days and hardly considered a boyfriend/girlfriend type thing.
The year ha finished out quickly, with Tyler the only one still in the practice of cockamime spells that were only angering the creatures around him, thus provoking the entire magical community on earth to start regularly attacking him and his peers in hopes of quieting him at last. My attempts to get him to stop were in vain and I’ve spent my summer making sure every one was safe.
Now I’m riding the bus and staring out the window, laid back on the small patch of fake leathery plastic, and watching a murky green world pass by, interrupted frequently by patches of white and odd reds as houses marred the forests so bland to me. I sighed, my hand resting atop the otherwise invisible Arne, clear in my sights, but not in any one else’s of this world.
He was my familiar for the past thousand plus years, and had changed forms when I had from a mighty red dragon, to this miniscule and comparatively powerless dragon. Though he was worlds more adorable than the menacing figure he’d once been.
He had a slim black figure about as long as my arm, or two and a half feet not including the tail. His tail added another three feet to the picture, as well as four inches of sharp point.
While the main of his form was black, his under side was a vivid purple color, and his head was covered in a bone looking substance that was harder than mithril extending into sharp spiraled horns about five inches long. Should he choose to open his eyes, they would be a startling red color, as vivid as rust, and as dark as blood, they were an oddity to his species. Usually the type of dragon her was now (corrinian barvilun) had the same colored eyes as they did under belly. His ancient spirit, however, had turned his eyes into that vivid color, just as mine had turned my eyes black as apposed to the green they were supposed to be.
Though perhaps the most annoying thing for Arne was his lack of wings. Corrinians were born with out wings and didn’t get them until they reached the age of fifty. A fact which I remind him of often in a teasing manner, though I did make it so that he could summon a pair of shadow wings whenever he wished.
Sighing, I would have to draw myself from my thoughts to push up, short blonde-brown hair falling into my eyes as I did. I’d brought nothing with me on that first day. It had seemed pointless to me to do so, and so I merely filed off the bus with the rest of my peers, ignoring the few calls from those I disliked in favor of fleeing to fetch my schedule.
I took a glance to the sky to see a glistening white and blue bird Tsubao perched on the rooftop, Hita waving down to me in the form of a black hair human with a red lion tail flicking around behind him. I chuckled at the ice phoenix and flame lion, they’d been a lot of help over the summer. Hita had watched over Tyler, and Tsubao had watched over Matt. Aralia had been assigned to Alex with Rulan, and Koreya had found his was to Lufarea’s house. Roval had taken up his post at Sarah’s house in my stead.
I have a lot of charges. The first of course, was Arne. Then there was Tsubao, an old ice phoenix around three hundred and forty. Hita was a flame lion about five hundred and thirty-six. Aralia was a bird of pure sound and wind, and Rulan was a young wood wolf. Roval was a water snake, and very lazy, unwilling to put much effort into anything really. Then there were thirty one others of less consequential note that you will likely get to know sooner or later.
Once more I would have to drag myself from the depths of my thoughts to register the teacher’s question about my name so I might retrieve my long awaited schedule. When the yellow sheet was at last handed to me, I turned and made way for the stage, back tracking along the marble floors of this rotten penitentiary.
It seemed that for one of the first times I could recall, I was there before any one else and was forced to take a seat on the plastic-like wooden steps to wait for them, recalling how many time before I’d sat in exactly the same place. This was where Tyler had first revealed to me that he was delving into the worlds of magic, and that he was dragging Matt and Alex along with him. Lufarea soon followed, and I had always been there from the start. It had been a truly entertaining point in time.
Sighing, my eyes found familiar faces in the crowd, but no one I cared to rush over to. My fingers drummed on the shiny surface beneath me, a familiar steady cl-cl-cl-clump ringing in my ears. Lufarea was the first to arrive, and I allowed her to believe that I didn’t know she was approaching me from behind, continuing to stare forward blankly and boardly.
I then felt light pressure pulling me back along my neck, and I didn’t struggle at first, feigning a weaker body than I had as I fell back into her. Then I twisted around, reminding her of my teeth with a light squeeze to her arm that would be sure to leave a bruise. Immediately the pressure was removed and I could here a happy cry of pain in my ear. Turning with a light laugh I embraced Lufarea with a rare display of affection.
She returned it, and took a step back to look me over, and after determining I had changed as little as her and her bright green eyes and bushy tightly curled brown hair, she asked me about my summer. Leaving out the constant trips to her house, I made a brief summary and returned the question to find hers had been just the same as I’d observed.
Next to arrive was Joanna, soon followed by Matt so that I could ask the both of them the same question after a brief exchange of greetings, unwilling to show any more affection to any one. The first hug had been impulsive and uncontrolled, now I was jut as violent and impassive as ever. No one had anything really that important happen to them over the summer that I didn’t already know about. Tyler, Amanda, Sarah, Claire, Alex and Shelbi were all the same. Beyond that, the arrivals were all new information that I didn’t even listen to any way.
Then we compared schedules, and I memorized every one else’s as well as my own, some how managing to keep them straight and separated, planning out the creatures I’d assign to each for their protection. Amanda, Claire, Joanna and Shelbi weren’t involved, but it was always better safe than sorry.
It seemed that I had AP history with Sarah, Shelbi, and Joanna. Joanna and Shelbi had English together, and the three of them met up again for science (biology). The whole of the group had managed to get B lunch one way or another.
Through out the course of the first day I made my decisions as was necessary based off of location and personality type of those involved. Within the same day I only had to be asked to be excused once to handle something while the others under my charge were all busy with others. And with over thirty creatures looking to you, for them all to be busy at once was saying something. Unfortunately though, I’d made their job even harder when I ordered them not to kill anything without explicit permission from me, or real danger to their lives.
To kill these creatures merely following orders would’ve been a very bad idea, indeed. After all, how would I have felt under the same circumstances to here that my charges were being killed off under my orders? Despite how this might knock some sense into the dunces that persisted in their attacks against the group, I was unwilling to inflict that kind of punishment upon them. So instead I only required a detainment and for them to be sent back to their own world later on by me.
Many days would pass in this boring way, with out any need for notation. They were quiet times within the classrooms, learning trivial pieces of information that either already knew or didn’t care about. Endless days of what seemed to be a very cruel form of punishment to me. It wasn’t until Halloween came around that things started to get interesting.
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