Tales & Time (Lost Time Academy #1)(23)
“Madilynn Dormiens, welcome to your first fight class. My name is Miss Aquana. As everyone already knows, I team you up into partners, and you combat the other until you win. Then when the bell goes, I team up the winners, and this goes on until there are two students left. Those two left battle each other, and the winner is the champion. The champion gets a prize of their choosing from a selection of pre-selected offers,” she explains. “We offer everything from an hour on a laptop with Wi-Fi to a trip to a human town for shopping or food.”
"How do you win?" I ask, curious.
"When your opponent is passed out or at least too badly injured to carry on. We have healers and creams to fix anything you can do. Though we prefer you perfect the art of knocking your classmate out rather than hurting them too badly," she says. “It’s no fun to have someone in the medic bay for weeks.”
"I'm sure Miss Dormiens will struggle to knock out a fly, let alone beat one person in here. You don’t need to worry, miss," Ella says, laughing through her words, and a few students around the room laugh. Even though she is being a cow, she has a point, if I’m being honest with myself. I can’t fight. I’m not going to pretend I can. So, let’s hope I have some secret powers, or this is going to be embarrassing. I glance at the brothers, who look tense as they watch me, but I smile at them anyway.
"Shut it, mermaid bitch," Tavvy snaps in annoyance. “Considering you’ve never won fight class, I don’t know why you’re talking.”
"ENOUGH!" Miss Aquana shouts, making us all go into complete silence. "Right, Miss Dormiens will go against Roger. Why don't Octavia and Ella fight each other to work out some of that misused tension?" I glance at the guy at my left, wondering if he is Roger. By the grin he gives me, I wouldn’t be surprised.
"Fine," Ella says in annoyance, whereas when I look at Tavvy, she seems pleased. Maybe Tavvy can beat her. I’m not sure my little fairy friend is all that innocent with the massive grin on her face at the moment. I think back to Roger, only noticing that the guy next to me is looking down at me with a smile.
“I’m Roger. Don’t worry, I will go easy on you,” he says, but I still gulp down a ball of fear in my throat as I nod at him, speechless. He only seems amused as he looks back at the teacher. I look to the brothers for comfort, but their angry expressions only make me more nervous.
"Everyone else, you can randomly choose your opponents today," she says, and everyone quickly walks off as Tavvy whispers to me while tugging my arm.
"Roger is Jack and the Beanstalk’s descendant. He grows vines from his body, but he can feel them. Hurt the vines to win." I nod at her advice, watching her walk away before Miss Aquana waves a hand in front of her for us to join her. As Roger and I are walking over, I notice Knox and Oisin have teamed up nearby, and so have Noah and Tobias. Each one them is looking at me like I’m about to enter a death sentence.
"I will stay close and watch the fight as it is your first time," she explains to me. I glance around the massive gym room, which has large white rectangles drawn on the floor. There are three rows of them, and the students seem to stand at either end of the rectangles. We get an empty one in the middle of the room, and I move to stand at the opposite side of Roger.
"In three, two, one..." At the end of Miss Aquana's warning, she blows her whistle, and a ball of water covers all of her body until she looks like she is floating inside it, perfectly happy as she smiles at me. I'm so distracted by Miss Aquana that I don’t see a massive green, leaf-covered vine heading straight for my chest. It hits me hard, knocking the air out of my chest, and I go flying straight across the floor, my side taking most of the hit. I look up just as vines slide tightly around my waist and lift me into the air. I pull at the tight vines that start spreading around my body, and then I hear someone laughing. As I’m pulling, I look down to see Roger holding his hands out, the vines coming from them, and he is the one laughing.
“Stop, that’s enough!” I hear someone shouting, but I ignore everything as I keep trying to hurt the vines with my nails and pull them off me. I try to do anything, even leaning down to bite them, but I can’t reach. Nothing seems to work as they continue to crawl up my body, and I glance around the room to see the brothers being slammed with a wall of water from Miss Aquana. As the vines get so tight that they hurt, I grab at the ones that tighten around my neck as I completely start to panic. I scream as I try to pull them away, only hearing the sound of Roger's laughing in the background as black spots appear in my vision. Just as the black spots look like they are about to take me under, a cold feeling appears in my hands, spreading all over my body. Like an instinct, I move my hands away from the vines on my neck and stretch them out at my side. Suddenly, one word seems to be whispered into my mind. A word I struggle to say because the vines are so tight now.
"D-Dor-Dormiens!" I scream out, feeling a power like nothing I’ve ever felt before blasting out my hands, and the world seems to freeze for a moment. Then I’m suddenly falling to the floor at full speed. I hit the floor with a smack, the blast hurting my cheek, and I instantly place my hand against it, coughing from the impact. For a few moments, I can do nothing but breathe through the pain and try to concentrate on whatever the hell just happened. I pull the vines from my neck, and they easily fall away, the strength they had before is totally gone now. I suddenly wonder why it’s so quiet. Seriously, what the hell just happened? I look down at my hands, seeing white glittering dust all over my hands, and the same dust is covering my body and the vines.