Burning Hope

Chapter 15: My Friends; The Pervert and The Persecuted

She chuckled as the students looked up at her in fear. How? How in the world was this possible? Didn't Luc say that Kali couldn't breach Eternal? Why was she here?

Kali roared, eliciting screams of fear from half of the students. "Listen up, pathetic Scale Children. I am High Lady Kali, Empress of all Sciana. I want to cause as little trouble as possible, so let's make things easy. I want Scarlett Kaida, and the rest of the heirs to the Crown. Let me take them, and if you refuse to comply with my wishes, I will be kind enough as to offer another option.

"I have planted one of my spies on campus, enrolled as a student here at Eternal Academy. For each day that my requirements are not met, I send them to kill one Scale Child. If my request is not met within three days, I will come back and take the heirs by force, then kill half of the students and employees on campus. I will slaughter them right in front of your eyes. Are we clear?"

"Either way we end up dead." Luc shouted behind me.

Kali's head swiveled in his direction. "Quite correct, Diplomat. Now, which death would you rather have? Now or later?"

"Like hell we're gonna hand over the Crown to you, witch!" A voice said. Well, she didn't exactly say 'witch', but a word that sounded very close to it. I looked over in the direction of the voice. There was a purple haired girl swearing enough to make a sailor blush while a guy held her back.

"Steffinee, you're committing suicide!" He scolded her.

"I don't give a rat's A!" She yelled at her friend. Turning back to Kali, she continued yelling at her. "There's no way you're ever gonna take the heirs! No way, you hear me! We're gonna beat you to a frickin' pulp for the sake of Sciana, you (insert extremely offensive thing here that can't be written)!"

Another girl stepped up, who I immediately realized was Lavender. I may not have known much, but I did know what these kids were doing would kill them. Lavender looked like she was getting ready to say something really inspiring, and if this were a movie, this would be the part where Lavender would give a really inspiring speech that caused all of the students to rally against Kali, who would be taken out way too easily, and then there would be a party and much celebrating, and probably a bunch of kissing and random love confessions. But this wasn't a movie. This was real life.

Three of the shadow creatures around Kali flew towards Lavender and attacked her as she let out an ear-piercing scream. I watched in horror as the shadows sunk their teeth into Lavender's skin, causing her to bleed profusely. But there was one thing the shadow creatures didn't count on: me. I wasn't going to sit back and watch one of my fellow students get killed. I called upon my dragon to assist me, running over towards Lavender. I felt power rush through me, then exit my hand forcefully. The blast of fire knocked the shadow creature off of Lavender.

I stood over her and looked over her body. She wasn't too badly hurt, the amount of blood made the wounds look worse than they really were. Sure, she had a deep laceration across her neck and a bloody stain seeping through the side of her dress, but it wasn't enough to kill her. How did I know? The things you learn from binge-watching Untold Stories of the ER.

"Can someone come and help this girl?!" I called out to the crowd of students. "Anybody at all? All you have to do is bring her to the nurse's office. Get her wounds clean before infection sets in."

Kallan came from the crowd—why she was there, don't ask me—and walked towards Lavender. She slung the injured girl over her shoulder and carried her off towards the direction of the school. Two bulky guys joined Kallan to help her in her efforts.

I looked up at Kali, putting all the hate I could muster into my stare. "What you're doing isn't fair." I told her. "It's cowardly. Instead of giving us a chance to fight, you're going to kill us either way! We'll end up dead!"