Warcry Academy

Three

Bethany's POV.

"Bethany," I whisper, agitated. "What's yours?"

She flinched, letting go of her stare, which was quite uncomfortable, as the moment I'd stepped through the door into the seating area, it's as if I'd caught her attention. "Erm... Clematis," she says. "Clematis Missful."

I slowly looked away from her golden hair, pale complexion and narrow grey eyes. I wasn't going to continue the conversation, otherwise, as I knew, it would be awkward. I hated the feeling on the fact how I'd been chosen, and all the other thirteen year old children sighed in relief as I metaphorically melted into the ground. The worst part was that every year we got paired with boys. Boys. Boys. Boys. And we're expected to love them at first sight? Well, I'd been paired with a boy I knew who lived opposite me... not that I really had a home. His name was Lioma Virstive, a short boy with spiky, brown hair which was vaguely different from his scratchy, brown skin. His eyes were chestnut brown, extremely squint and utterly narrow. When you first took a look at the guy, you'd think he was cool, nevertheless, the only way to describe him is repugnant. I can definitely see that he's likely to be one of the first of us to die.

I watched around the room with caution and nothing seems to interest me. I observed the emerald wallpaper, carpeting the long ceiling above, and the walls. The carpet was a dirty beige, all ruffled up so that my feet faintly sank into it. There were fourteen sets of cyan sofas in the room which was where all the boys and girls from all fourteen towns sat, motionless expressions, only showing the pain and devastation that they were suffering. Finally, a golden chandelier with diminutive, bright, white candles, dangled on the ceiling and shook every now and then. I figured the chandelier was pretty treacherous, but, I'd rather get injured and be sent back to my town instead of travelling to Warcry Academy.

The room had been completely silent after I ended the conversation with that Clematis girl. All the eyes in the room, including mine, adamantly gazed at Lioma who hastily took an apple from the bowl on the wooden table that sat in front of me, and crunched on it annoyingly. Simultaneously, everyone looked back down to their shoes.

I looked at the silver necklace hanging from my neck, and clicked open the lock.

In the necklace, I saw my beautiful mother and father standing together, smiling. On the other side, me and my brother held each other's hands and laughed, but it was all frozen in a round, small picture in the necklace.

It's my fault my brother is dead...

What happened at the time...
(Bethany was seven.)

Author's POV.

"One, two, three, four," Mathias counted. Bethany giggled and dashed behind a tree in the woods. She didn't realise how far away she was from her brother, Mathias.

"Read or not, here I'm coming!" Mathias shouted, and Bethany surreptitiously ducked behind the bush that grew on a tree. "Bethany, where are you?"

Bethany cupped her hands over her mouth, trying so hard not to let out a single sound. She was startled when a group of birds made a screeching cacophony above her, and she gasped.

He's going to find me now... Bethany thought.

Bethany waited patiently for twenty minutes behind the tree, scrambling through a small pile of leaves she'd built and laughed while wrecking it. She supposed that Mathias hadn't found her yet because she had found an absolutely brilliant hiding space.

"Ow!" Bethany cried out. "Mathias?" Bethany began to burst into tears. She had poked her finger on a sharp knife, randomly sticking out of the ground beside her leaf—pile, and Bethany was now bleeding. She took the knife, planning to show Mathias what had caught her finger and hoped he could "bandage" it up, or at least help her.

Bethany didn't know how far away she was from Mathias. She was only seven, of course.

On her way back to Mathias, she forgot about her bleeding, poking her finger, and the knife that she was holding.

She reached Mathias. And gasped.

"No!" she yelled, and started crying even harder, screaming into the air. She coughed at the side, wretched, but didn't throw up.

Mathias laid on the ground, blood soaking into his white t—shirt and his dark blue eyes were open, motionless. Bethany cried and cried, and stopped crying when she witnessed the knife, and blood, in her hand.

"I-I-I killed m-my own b-b-b-brother?" Bethany stuttered, stunned. "No!"

Bethany's POV.

I repeated that thought over and over again in my head, wiping unnoticeable tears from my face. Until the train came to a sudden hault, and I looked up. "Master Lioma and Miss Bethany, will you please follow me," Harold Je'Neil lead me and Lioma out of the train, along with everyone else.

I gasped when I saw the spectacular view that was in front of me; towering, ancient bricks were tidily stacked into a castle. A huge castle of bricks. There was nothing else, except for the gigantic wooden doors with golden metal patterns of people fighting each other, and some people being stabbed. The doors creaked open ponderously, as everyone's keen eyes watched impatiently at the same time, including my eyes, too.

When the doors opened properly, I could see a man in an immaculate, black tuxedo and high, leather, buckled boots with golden belts on the sides, which looked odd with the suit that he was wearing. He had wispy, greyish short hair, all combed impeccably to the back of his neck. He also had a wispy beard, the same colour as his hair, faintly visible and he had thin eyebrows that almost looked like a uni brow. He was smiling with small split lips and his hands were held together.

He nodded and spoke.

"Welcome to Warcry Academy."