Katherine: Narrative 19

I follow Tilk; I would rather be with him than everyone else in case they all somehow manage to let me get kidnapped again while standing next to a hole.  Using this massive blade, he breaks through the city’s foundation with ease allowing us all an easy entrance into the city.  Thalia produces a duplicate of herself to send through the hole to investigate what lies inside the city without causing any injury to ourselves.  We scoot over as close as we can to the side of the passage to allow the duplicate to pass through and into the city.  As she pulls herself up and into the city, I strain to try and hear any bit of noise that could pass.  No gun fire, no shouts, she seems to be alright up there.

“All clear,” Thalia whispers.

Her clothing has changed into that familiar white garb that people wore in the last city; Eva is wearing the same thing.  Tilk must have noticed their change in clothes and looks down at his own tunic and the white outfit begins to materialize on him.  He touches my shirt and my clothes show as though they were the white outfit as well.  Tilk helps to give me a boost to exit the hole, I help from the top to bring everyone else out from our hole.  Tilk needs no help, maintaining his human appearance with his dragon wings boosting him out from the hole.  Looking around, the town seems fairly quiet with very few people or guards walking around the town at all. 

We can spot the familiar looking building in the center of town and we begin to make our way towards it.  The goal is simple, to release the dragons from captivity.  We totally got this.  There are no guards outside the building so we simply enter the doors.  No guards inside the building either, just an elevator looking at us from the opposite end of the room.  We cautiously make our way across the empty room towards the elevator; there’s no telling what traps could be laid out in wait for us.  We’ve gone through so many of these buildings now yet everyone still contains new traps or terrors to slow us down.

The four of us slide into the elevator with only the choice of moving up, or going down.  Upward we go, there’s no telling what we’ll find either way.    As soon as the door opens, we are looking into an entire room filled with computers.  A handful of white-clothed personnel are working on the computers in front of us.  I can’t see any dragons anywhere; I look over to Tilk for any reaction that maybe he knows where they might be found.    Seeing that he hasn’t relaxed his guard, there must be something going on somewhere.  We leave out from the elevator leaving us standing not but five feet from this guy working on a computer.  Eva or Thalia throw something at him, I’m not sure which but I know that it wasn’t I or Tilk and the guy turns around at us aiming a small pistol at us.  I feel the energy of the shot fly past my face as Tilk becomes frozen in his stance.

Katherine: Narrative 18

We ride for quite some time in silence before we stop a good distance away from another concrete wall circles another city.  Everything looks about the same except there is no entrance gate and no outside patrol. 

“Eva,” Chaud begins, “You could blow a hole out in the wall, right?”

“Won’t that alert everyone that we’re here?” I murmur. “Shouldn’t we at least try to sneak in without having to fight a whole town outright?”

“Do you think that you could use your powers to make a tunnel under the wall to get us in?” Thalia asks Eva.

“I don’t see why not,” Thalia answers confidently.

She seems to rub her feet over the ground as a hole begins to build beneath her.  I stay back in the SUV with Ravager and Tilk while Thalia and Chaud keep an eye on Eva as she works on the hole.  Soon Eva comes back up so we leave from the SUV to see what is going on.  Chaud keeps scanning over the wall and the surrounding area.

 “It’s ready for us to push through; I’m just having a slight problem in breaking through the surface to get in to the town.” Eva explains to all of us. 

“It appears there is a source located outside the town that provides power to the town,” Chaud shares.  “I could knock out the power source and make things easier to take care of inside the city.

“I’ll go with you,” Ravager offers in a throaty voice.

“I’ll get the rest of us into the city,” Tilk grunts as he passes into the cave.

Katherine: Narrative 17

                I wake up resting on top of the covers and stretch my arms over my head.  I roll from side to side with my arms stretched up to loosen my back before I step out of bed.  I lift my shirt to my nose to smell how badly in need of cleaning my clothes are.  They should be fine for a little more wear before they need to be washed again.  I do not even bother to make the bed; I do straighten out some of the winkles from lying atop the covers.

                I walk over to the mirror atop the chest of drawers in my room and begin raking my fingers through my hair to brush out any tangles that may be in my hair.  It doesn’t get all of them but my hair looks better than when I first woke up.  I’m willing to bet that Thalia and Chaud are still sore with me but that’s okay because I feel the same towards them. 

I wonder if Ravager is still sore about me calling him my pet Scruffles as I make my way toward the kitchen. I doubt he’d have held on to that for too long, he seems more preoccupied with other things that to still be holding on to that.  I stare over to where he is hovering in the shadows of the hallway.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask him.

“Eating…” his voice hisses from the shadows.  “You all have the most delicious nightmares.”

“Fair enough,” I answer.  “I’m going to make myself some bacon then.”

I turn and leave him in the hallway to finish his breakfast of the dreams the others.  I had not even noticed really that I haven’t had a single nightmare in the company of Ravager.  It is really nice to not have those to bother me when I rest, with everything that has happened so far I would be a mess. 

Katherine: Narrative 16

We all make our way to different cages to complete the task set before us.  It just seems like there should be more that we could be able to do for these dragons with the circlets to set them back to what they once were.  I stare in on the dragon in the cage before me in wonder, what more can I do for them?  Down the hall I can hear a dragon fall in the cage next to me, Thalia stands before it with her hand raised.  I begin to raise my hand up to shoot electricity into my dragon but this feels all wrong.  My hand is shaking, there has got to be another way to free the dragons.  I hear something shatter behind me as my electricity shoots into the wall of the cage completely missing the dragon. 

“Stop!” Tilk shouts and I spin around to see what’s going on.

Eva’s clap shattered the circlet of the dragon in her cage, all that is left in there is the broken circlet on the floor.  The dragon has already flown off and I finally release this huge breath that I did not even realize that I had been holding.  These dragons can be saved more than just being put out of their misery, we just have to break the circlet and they will be free to fly back to their homes.  I feel utterly useless in that respect; there is not much that I can even begin to do to help to break the circlets.  If I use electricity on the circlet, it could fry their heads.  I could try and get right up on the circlet and take it off, but could I really make it that fair on a controlled dragon before getting myself killed?

Eva and Tilk make their way down the hall, destroying circlets and I just watch the dragons fly free.  It is such a relief to not have had to kill any of them, it was not their fault they were captured and controlled by these circlets.  As we watch the last one fly off, all power drains from the facility.  Eva and Thalia look to me and I know that they are hoping that I can boost the elevator again.  I am honestly afraid to, it worked no problem last time but it was absolutely draining to have to pour so much focus into my energy output.  Tilk transforms back into his dragon form.
                “Climb on,” Tilk tells us.  “I can get us all out from here.”

Again, I climb up to Tilk’s neck to hold on for the ride back to base.  Eva and Thalia climb aboard and I am thankful for Tilk being so large that I can rest on his neck independent of their company.  The feeling of flying at the base of his neck is such a relaxing and comforting feeling that I truly do not wish for it to be disrupted by anyone.  As we fly away toward our home base, I can hear the crunch of metal and turn to see the city starting to tilt from the pillar and fall toward the ground. 

When we reach back to base, there is a holographic image up of some people waiting to speak to both Thalia and Chaud.  I suppose I could use this as a time to mess around with them a bit for letting me get kidnapped.  I stand right behind them speaking to this projected image before us.

“You two haven’t checked in for a while,” the voice speaks.

“We’ve been pretty busy checking on towns that you couldn’t handle,” Thalia retorts.

“We’ve been rescuing dragons!” I shriek from behind them which gains me glares from both Thalia and Chaud.

“There are no such things as dragons,” the man on the screen responds.

“We’ve got one here with us in the base the Chaud built for us in the mountain!” I yell while pointing straight to Tilk, who simply coughs and waves to the image.

“We were calling to see if you all knew anything about the C.A. city being destroyed,” the voiced pressed on.

“We were just in a city that went falling to the ground,” I offer.

                “Take her to her room,” Chaud tells Nigel, the outer suit that Chaud wears.

                Nigel begins to escort me to my room but as soon as we enter the hallway, I tear away from him and close myself into my room.   I collapse on the bed and go to sleep.  Tomorrow should be another fun-filled day.

Katherine: Narrative 15

“Great,” Thalia murmurs while floating atop a white fabric strip.  She must’ve taken one from one of the biomancers.  “We’ve trashed another vehicle, now how are we going to get there?”

“I’ve still got a way,” Chaud says as his mechanical suit removes from his body and transforms into a motorcycle setting next to him.

“I can follow on his shadow,” hisses Ravager.

“I can carry the rest,” Tilk offers. 

Tilk changes into his dragon form and I immediately climb on and hold on to his neck.  I am scared for my hands touching him, but with each movement up his body my drain seems to have no effect.  It is nice to be able to touch someone and not absorb their life energy.  Eva and Thalia climb up behind me and we begin to head on towards the dragon base.  I have never ridden a dragon ever before and the experience was amazing.  Holding on to the large strong neck as air pushes against me with each movement.  I have an intense urge to just rest myself against Tilk and savor in every aspect of this moment, but I push it back somewhere deep inside of me.  I think about maybe pushing Thalia off instead, maybe that would make me feel more at ease to enjoy this moment.  I am still not quite at ease with her since I was captured by Sophie, like somewhere Thalia is connected to Sophie and therefore to blame. 

As we fly closer we can see a pillar in the center of an open field.  Following the pillar up toward the sky, we can see what almost appears to be a city floating above us.  If we could get to any of the pipes that lead up in to the city, we could crawl in through there.  I look down and can see Chaud and Ravager near the base pillar working their way up to the city.  I think Tilk understands the plan to get us in through a pipe because he takes us toward the base of the city right under one of the pipes.  Eva climbs in first and I follow right behind her.  I help to pull Thalia up as quickly as possible and then turn to aid Tilk enter in whatever way I can.  I watch as he transforms, worried that he is going to drop to the ground below but he doesn’t.  He simply flies to the pipe with us, his dragon wings out and carrying him to the pipe.

We make our way up the pipe and enter quietly inside a familiar looking building.  We will help Tilk free the dragons; no one should have to remain captive against their will.  We silently make our way across the room and enter the elevator in this building to slowly carry us to where we need to be.  As the elevator door opens, it almost looks as though we are on the top floor; there is a long hallway in front of us with six cages on each side of the hall.  We can see clearly into the cages, dragons with the circlet atop the crown of their heads in each cage.  The cages seem to have an open back for an easy mount to fly off to wherever from within the caging.

“Kill them all,” Tilk hisses.

Katherine: Narrative 14

Thalia groans but stops the SUV to let me out anyway.  It is hard not to keep a smile from forming on my face.  I go over to the bushes and just squat there for a while.  I do not really have anything to do so I just wait and try when suddenly I hear an explosion from where the SUV was.  I quickly pull my pants back on and make my way back to see what happened.  I can see that our SUV is on fire; Chaud is wearing his mechanical suit, Thalia is shooting her shiny fire, Eva is stomping, and I can’t seem to see Ravager.  Tilk seems to be standing back while I see that everyone else is engaged with biomancers.  I can see one that is dead draped over a catapult; all of these biomancers are utilizing weapons that are not like their daggers.  Some of the biomancers are even floating on small strips of white fabric.

I walk over to the fiery rubble that was our SUV and begin to absorb the heat from the flames.  The electrical hum fills my ears and I know that I can discharge the energy anytime now.  I thrust my hand out and towards one of the on-coming biomancers.  The electricity sails directly into his chest and he collapses right before my feet.  Eva, Thalia, Chaud, and Tilk have taken care of the rest of the biomancers but there is still a whole stack of weapons next to the catapult.  We all head over to sift through the weapons and I find one that seems to call out to me.  It’s an ornate scythe; the metal snaith is a little over five feet long with gold detailing wrapping around it.  The snaith has two handles near the base, and the gold swirls around the tang, heel, beard, and the ring or the scythe.  The curved blade of the scythe has to be about two feet in length and takes my breath away.

“It’s nothing compared to Samuel,” Tilk’s words tear me away from my gaze with the scythe.

He is holding something that looks much like a zweihänder that is over a foot wide at the base and must be about eight feet long. The blade is black and over an inch thick, double-edged with one edge serrated down the side looking very much like dragons teeth.  It catches no gleam in the light at all; it looks like it must weigh a ton but Tilk carries it along with him with great ease.  It is quite impressive honestly, but I am not having a contest with a dragon on who has a more powerful weapon.  

Katherine: Narrative 13

I awaken and move to the bathroom to gather into my clothing.  They should be wet still in spots but seem surprisingly dry for hanging indoors overnight.  I press the clothes close to my face and breathe in the scent of forest still lingering within the clothing.  After getting dressed, I work my way back to the kitchen to fix some bacon for breakfast and Tilk is standing in the kitchen with a turkey leg, his deep red eyes seem to carry so much thought within them as he tears at the meat.  There’s a large hilt wrapped in crimson leather with two feet of thick black blade peaking above his shoulder, he must be carrying a massive weapon on his back with a hilt of that size.  I nod at him but work around the kitchen in silence around him. 

Slowly, more people begin making their way in to the kitchen.  Thalia enters and presses a button that generates a light breakfast for her.  Chaud enters the room holding a near empty glass of scotch in his hands.  Eva enters the room and pushes the button over and over again generating multiple loaves of bread which she stuffs into her pockets as though she might be storing up to never find food again.  Ravager slinks through the room toward the garage door and is gone.  I guess he is ready to get moving this morning. 

Without really saying much of anything, we all start to pour into the SUV together.  Ravager under the backseat, I’m sitting by Tilk, Thalia and Eva sit together in the front while Chaud is riding his motorcycle out from the home base.  After what feels to be half an hour in the SUV, I decide to make this ride more difficult for them than it needs to be.

“I have to pee,” I announce.

Katherine: Narrative 12

                As they all discuss among one another about how the dragon got in and why he was there, I wander off to explore and find my room.  They are stupid if they cannot figure out why he was here, he is going to help release the other dragons.  I could care less how he got in here; it is nice to know there is someone else here besides these idiots.  I quickly find a hallway branching off from the living room with five doors on each side with another door at the end of the hall.  I try to open the first door on the left, it’s locked, and this must be the room Tilk is occupying at the moment.  I turn and try to open the door opposite this on the right of the hall, it opens and inside is a fairly simple room lined with soft blue walls.  There is a simple full-size bed centered on the back wall with a teddy bear resting center on the pillows.  Sandalwood furnishings accent the room and it gives a very calm and serene feeling inside of me. 

               I wander over to a door located near the back of the room.  I open it to find a simple bathroom; mirror, sink, toilet, and shower.  I strip down from my clothing; it looks a dirty mess from ash, smoke, dirt and sweat.  I sit down on the toilet and begin to unzip my boots and throw them to a corner of the bathroom.  I gather the clothing in my arms and step into the shower.  Throwing the clothing in a pile in the corner of the shower, I just stand there feeling the water run over me.  I could go into a trance watching the water quickly drip from my hair hanging in front of my face. 

As the water hits my clothing in the corner, I can see the dirt and grime sliding from the material toward the drain.  Watching the filth run from my clothing snaps me back to what I was doing in the shower to begin with.  There is a simple bar of soap resting in a tiny alcove in the wall of the shower.  I take the soap and begin rubbing it over my hands to give it a good lather, the scent of trees and grass seem to fill into my nostrils. 

I pick up my black leggings and begin scrubbing them with the soap first, I try to wash into parts of the leggings before rinsing them off and tossing them over the frosted glass that separates the shower from the rest of the bathroom.  My shirt is quick to wash, just a simple blue sleeveless blouse that buttons up the front.   The long pleats at the base of the right side of the shirt are frayed slightly from extended wear and I almost forget to clean under the collar of the shirt.  I drape it over the frosted glass with the leggings and begin to scrub my unmentionables to hang over the shower glass as well before I begin to scrub a dirt and grime from my own body and hair.  After the shower, I leave my clothing resting over the edge of the frosted glass to dry.  I head back into the bedroom and lay down on the soft pink paisley bed sheets.  I grab the bear and place it under my head and drift into sleep. 

Katherine: Narrative 11

We all get in to the SUV, save for Chaud who stays on his motorcycle.  We ride north into the wilderness with Tilk instructing the way.  It does not take long before we reach a quiet village hidden within the woods near Quetico Lake.  As we leave the van, we are approached by an elderly looking man with a short, thin beard resting on his chin. 

“Thank you so very much for freeing Tilk and the other,” the elder speaks in gravelly voice.  “We are a neutral entity.  We keep from interfering with the goings ons within your nation.  Sadly, it does not seem to be reciprocated, Tilk and the other warrior dragons are not the only ones of our kind being held captive.”

Tilk scoffs at the elder and walks off into the village.

“We could help,” I murmur looking at the ground.  I want to help but I feel odd offering up the group like this.

“If you can give me the coordinates of all the known captured dragons, I can input them in Nigel and we can track them down and free them for you no problem,” Chaud offers from behind me.

Chaud begins speaking with the elder gathering all the information about how many dragons have been captured and roughly where they are being held.  I slowly walk back to the SUV, I feel exhausted from everything that has happened today but I am eager to begin releasing the remaining dragons from captivity.  Thalia walks in to the driver’s seat, Eva in to the navigator’s seat, and Ravager slides his way under the seat behind me.  Chaud finishes talking with the elder, and then boards his bike.

We start driving back toward the mountains that Chaud had left the nanites to work on and now it has transformed into an underground home.  Thalia and Chaud call it a base; it looks like a home inside to me.  From the outside, all you can see is just the mountain until you reach a small entrance at the base of the mountain that we can drive our SUV in.  Once you leave from the garage, there it opens into a large living room with a kitchen attached to the side. 

               “Now everyone has their own room set up to meet their specific needs,” Chaud explains.
               “Not everyone,” a large, smoky voice booms throughout the air.  “I have taken your room, Chaud, to meet for my needs.”

               “Who is that?” Thalia exclaims.

               “Tilk,” I whisper under my breath and then I speak up to the group. “It’s the dragon warrior.”

Katherine: Narrative 10

We enter the elevator and everything seems to shut down.  There are no lights, the elevator door will not shut and pressing the buttons does nothing.  There is no energy for us to get out using the elevator. 

“Can you start the elevator back up?” Thalia asks me.

“I can try,” I answer nervously.

I have never tried doing this before.  I am honestly worried that I might apply too much energy into the elevator and cause it to short circuit.  I have so much energy in me right now that I have not even been able to throw out a lightning bolt to assist in taking out any opposition we have faced.  I take a deep breath and focus directly on to the circuit panel of the elevator.  As I slowly exhale I can feel the electricity leave my fingertips lightly and entering into the panel under my fingertips.  The lights in the elevator turn on and I keep my hand pressed against the metal panel as Thalia presses the button for us to return to the base floor.  I keep the flow of electricity steady and calm as it carries us upward.  We reach our floor and I keep my hand and electricity flowing until everyone has left the elevator.  As soon as everyone has left the elevator, I quickly release my hand and dive out of the elevator door, unsure of whether the elevator will fall without its energy source continuing. 

We run from the building and meet back with Ravager and Chaud at the SUV. 

“Blimey, I haven’t heard from you all in yonks!” Chaud calls out to us. “Who’s the bloke ya got?” 

“He’s a dragon we saved from in there,” Thalia explains.

“My name is Tilk and I should be heading back to my people and inform them of what is going on,” the dragon man responds.  “Thank for your help.”

“We’ll escort you back so that no one tries to capture you again.” Thalia offers to him.

“We’re not too far north from here.” Tilk answers, “It really should take no time at all to get there.”

Katherine: Narrative 9

The dragon inside the cage collapses to the ground as the riders run to open their cages to harness their dragons.  I raise my hand out to blast an electric bolt to a nearby rider but I think I may have absorbed more energy than I can handle.  The air in here now has the feel of static charge throughout the room.  The dragon man moves to the next cage and puts down the dragon within it as Eva raises her hands and gives a tremendous clap that crushes two riders into the wall, they slide down leaving blood smears against the wall.  As the third dragon gets put down, Thalia shoots a blue shimmering light and the third rider is left a burning corpse on the floor. 

The final dragon gets taken out and we make our way back in to the elevator.  Thalia pushes the button in the elevator which begins to take us downward another floor.  In this floor there are more dragons being held like our dragon companion had been.  We all turn our heads and look to Eva at the same time.

“Well, I guess that is my cue,” Eva says with a sigh.

Eva crosses the room to the contained dragons while rubbing her hands together.  She takes in a deep breath and thrusts her hands against the barrier causing this one to shatter and release the dragons.  They all nod to the dragon man that is with us and leave us all behind to help the dragon man to clear out the rest of the building.  Moving back in to the elevator, Thalia presses the button and we slowly move downward once more.   It seems this will be our last floor and then we can leave this building behind us.

As the door opens, we’re faced with a whole room full of eggs the size of watermelons.  The eggs are brownish with an odd black glaze over them.  Our dragon companion seems to flare up in anger and begins to morph back into his dragon form.  He breaths a fierce fire over the eggs and incinerates all of the eggs within the room.  As he finishes that, he morphs back into the humanoid form wearing the tunic and walks back into the elevator with a heavy look on his face.

“They were tainted,” he murmurs to himself.

Katherine: Narrative 8

               I hand the card over to Thalia and she places it in the slot.  As the elevator begins to move, Thalia takes the card back out and hands it back to me to place inside the jacket pocket once again.  There is a tiny bell sound and the doors begin to open slowly showing a room full of computers with six people sitting behind the computer screens.  The far side wall there is fire blasting upon it, a dragon is captured inside!  This dragon looks different than the ones that were circling over the town not too long ago, it is as the body is red and the scales are a silver iridescence.  The red plays hide and seek beneath the silver scales as the dragon moves around shooting fire at its container trying to release itself.  He seems to calm and stare right toward us at the elevator; the men behind the computers grow elated when the dragon ceases the fire.  The dragon begins breathing fire again and the men continue to focus hard typing away at their computers.

               Eva walks around the computers and the people working on them do not even take notice of her, they are too busy working on their computers.  She rubs her hands together and then thrusts them to the barrier that contains the dragon and it shatters around it, letting the dragon free from what kept it bound.  Thalia hides back into the elevator as the dragon breathes fire over Eva incinerating the people working on the computers.  I race into the fire and raise my arms around it, absorbing as much of the heat as I can possibly store within myself to use later. 

               “There are more in here,” says the dragon in a very smoky, masculine voice.  “I’ll show you to them.”

               The dragon’s body begins to morph and shrink from the tremendous size of a creature it was to a tan man with long dark hair who can’t be more than half a foot taller than I am.  The scales become a white tunic to cover his body, his well-toned arms remaining bare as he walks over to another elevator in the room.  Eva, Thalia, and I follow him into the elevator and as the door shuts slowly behind us.   The dragon man pushes a button in the elevator and we are carried carefully downward to another floor.

               As the door opens, we can see more dragons in cages, the cages are different though as they have bars containing the dragons inside of them.  The dragons are all wearing metallic circlets around their heads.  There are three men in this room walking around carrying riding gear; reins, saddles, saddle blankets.  These people must ride on the dragons. 

               “Weak-willed,” the dragon man snarls as he swiftly approaches the nearest cage and reaches through the bars. 

Katherine: Narrative 7

While the guards are distracted, Thalia, Eva, and I race through the opening.  Inside the walls it appears to be a fairly simple city.  Many house all looking the same as the other seem to wrap around inside of this wall.  The houses seem to wrap around leaving a tall building in the center of the town.  It’s quick to notice that most people around here are all wearing the same long white coats as they walk around town.  We obviously stand out the way we look and quickly duck behind a house for cover.  Thalia mutters something and suddenly her clothes and Eva’s clothes match to what is being worn around the town. 

“Put this on, duck,” a familiar voice behind me whispers.

I turn around, and there is Chaud and Ravager standing right by us.  Chaud is holding one of those white coats in his hand.  I quickly take the coat from his hand and as soon as I finish getting it on; an alarm begins to blare and everyone that was on the streets, begin to flee indoors.  We follow suit and all run into the nearest home and shut the door behind us.

As we close the door, I notice a woman sitting in a chair holding her daughter in her lap in the center of the room.  The woman cannot be too much older than I am, the daughter looks to be somewhere around six.  They both look so pale in the white clothing with their dark brown hair hanging in their faces.

“Who are you?” she stammers while holding her daughter’s head to her chest.

“We came in from outside when we heard the alarm,” Thalia answers.  “What is going on there?”

             “You don’t know what the alarm means?” the woman inquires, her voice still shaking.

             “You’ll have to pardon my wife here,” Chaud answers as he wraps his arm around Thalia. “She hasn’t been all quite right since she got ill.”

               The woman looks at Chaud with his arm wrapped around Thalia and immediately seems to calm.  She stands up and keeps her daughter held tight to her.  I notice that I don’t see Ravager anywhere, probably hiding somewhere in the shadows from everyone’s sight.

               “Let me go get you all something to drink while we wait.” She says without shake to her voice at all.  “If you want a reminder of why the alarms are going, you are welcome to take a peek out of the window.”

               She leaves the room with her daughter to fetch some water and I peek out the window and it looks like the sky is on fire.  There seems to be some kind of barrier between the city and the fire keeping the city from being burned to the ground.  Between breaks of fiery bursts you can see what it causing the fire, dragons.  There has to be at least a dozen of them flying over the city, trying to make their way through but to no avail.  Why would dragons be attacking such a small town?

               “Oh!  Pretty…” I hear Thalia exclaim beside me, must be trying to play the part of someone who is bit off.

               “So, do you work in the tower on the project too?” The woman asks as she returns with a pitcher of water and some empty cups.

               “Oh, yes ma’am.” Chaud lies with a handsome grin smudged across his face.

               “You must put in many hours.  My husband works there too.  I feel like I never really get to see him much anymore, always gone,” she says while stroking a family photograph on a shelf. 

               The alarm silences outside, and we politely thank the woman for sharing shelter with us before we leave her home.  We don’t walk long from her home when suddenly the woman’s voice calls out behind us:

               “That’s him!  That’s the man who killed me husband!”

               We all turn to look as she is pointing to Chaud.  We see guards begin to surround upon Chaud and he appears to go with them fairly compliantly.  He does not even try to break free, and no one in the group tries to help him.  We turn away from watching him being handcuffed and make our way to the tall central building.  We enter through a glass door that pulls us into a white room; white tiles line the floor along white walls and there appears to be an elevator.  We push a button to enter the elevator and there are no buttons inside the elevator except a thin rectangle slot next to the door.  I rummage around in the jacket that Chaud gave me to wear and find a card inside the front pocket with a picture on it.  It was the same man from the picture that woman was looking at on her shelf.  Chaud must have really killed her husband simply for something to wear inside this town.  

Katherine: Narrative 6

I spend every ounce of my being into keeping this energy out of me, and then it stops.  Just like that, the cycling is over.  I open my eyes as Chaud is removing the needles from my neck.  I can smell whiskey from his breath, as he continues to remove everything that connected me to that energy source.  As mad as I am at him, I have no energy left to argue against his releasing me and just lie there until he has finished removing everything that confines me. 

               As I stand, the room begins to blur so I force myself to keep steady.  I refuse to show any weakness around him, I have to get out of here first.  I follow Chaud from this inner chamber outside the building, which seems surrounded by many people just casually walking away without a care in the world and beeping to themselves.  We pass right through them and I can hear them more closely.  They aren't making beeping sounds, they really are beeping!  I continue moving alongside Chaud heading back to that familiar SUV, Eva is sitting in front next to Thalia.  I climb in to the SUV and relax back against the floorboards.  I cannot bear to look at these people yet, I do not know what I am going to do.  They did come back for me, which should mean something but they are at fault for this happening to begin with.

               I hear explosions outside of the SUV, they are not very loud.  I slowly peak up to see the people exploding one by one far back in the city as we are driving away toward a mountain not far from the town.  I lay back down to rest on the floorboard as they stop near the mountains.  There’s a lot of talk of nanites, tiny little robots that Chaud can program through his motorcycle (which wow, transforms into this walking suit) to do whatever he needs.  Apparently there a bunch of untapped nanites in this mountainside that Chaud is programming to turn into some kind of base. 

               While Chaud is working on setting these microscopic robots to work, Thalia comes back from having been talking to herself, presumably using her communicator I suppose to talk with someone.

               “I just got done talking with Shadow Core,” she begins.  “They did not know anything about that town we found Katherine in.  They said that there is a town north from here but that they are not allowed to touch it but if we want to check it out on our own…”

               “Well, let’s find ourselves a bit of Barney then,” answers Chaud.

               Everyone starts piling back into the SUV, Chaud on his motorcycle.  I guess we are heading to this town to see what these Shadow Council people won’t go near.  If the Shadow Council will have something to do with Sophie, I do not think that I will want much to do with this town.  Well, maybe this will be a good opportunity to return them all the favor of being captured, I still think that I can use them to get as close as I need to Shadow Council. 

               The vehicle begins to pull to a stop so I pull myself up from the floor to climb out of the SUV and look out at what we are facing.  A concrete wall wraps around to the height of maybe twenty feet with about a ten feet gap with four men at each side of the opening.  Two of the men are upright and scanning around; two are hunched on all fours and appear to be sniffing the air for something. 

               “Kill C.A.” rasps Ravager and suddenly one of the hunched men attacks the other, the two standing men run over to see why they are attacking each other.

Katherine: Narrative 5

I had to have blacked out for a period, I awake to the sound of church bells chiming.  I am no longer being pulled around by Sophie but am laying down staring up at a ceiling.  The ceiling seems to stretch on forever into its dark wooden archways.  Panic hits inside my chest making it difficult to breathe.  Can I break free from Sophie on my own or will I need help?  Eva needed help and she seems so much stronger than I am.  Can they find me?  They found Eva by her communicator; I do not have one of those. 

I struggle against my bindings but I can’t turn my head either way or move my arms or legs, all I can see is the ceiling.  I can feel the pain of needles stuck into my arms, into my neck, can feel something taped to places on my scalp.  I swallow back the bile that forces its way to the back of my mouth as tears begin to sweep back on my face.  Not only am I captured, I’m hooked up to who-only-knows what. 

Chaud.  Thalia.  Ravager.  They left me alone to be captured.  Do they supply this Sophie with people to do whatever on?  Are they human traffickers for this Sophie?  Just finding people wherever they might, take them into their group, and allow Sophie to run off with them?  I cannot believe that I was so stupid to just blindly go about with them, especially after seeing them react without a care to Sophie taking two other people from them.  I was an idiot to have continued staying anywhere near those people. 

Suddenly, I begin to hear the church bells again when unexpectedly pain begins to fill my body from my head, arms, and neck.  I do not know this energy, it flows through me.  No, flowing is not right.  It is almost like this energy is cycling through me, entering through these terminal points on my body, and then releasing back into the equipment.  I cannot sense anything of my surroundings anymore; no sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch only this energy.  The pain is intense, has to be near some of the worse that I have ever felt but I keep channeling the energy around and around again, determined not to hold it within me.  

Katherine: Narrative 4

“What’s that?” says one of the guards indicating towards Ravager.

“It’s my pet Scruffles!” I blurt out before anyone could take in as much as a breath.  If they don’t know what this shadow thing is as much as I don’t know what it is there’s no sense for them to think they can take him to examine and such.  I’d rather the shadow thing be mad at me for saying this than whisked off to be a test subject for whatever the hell here.

The guard gives a funny look and waves us on through.  Thalia drops us off at some hotel looking thing and the shadow thing and I leave the SUV as Thalia and Chaud start heading off somewhere else.  Ravager actually looks like a man of shadows next to me as we walk in to find our room.  I can tell he seems pretty upset about what I said in the care, but I don’t care.  I don’t regret it for a minute; he can be mad all he wants. 

We make it to the same room to lay down for bed.  As soon as we enter the room and the door shuts, he goes from being a man of shadows back to being just a shadow thing.  I don’t mind sharing the room with him, he’s just shadows.  Even if he is mad at me for what I said, he’s not mad enough to kill me in my sleep for what I said.  I pass into a deep slumber; I can’t think to the last time that I slept somewhere this comfortable. 

I awake to Ravager blobbed in the corner, looking content if I do say so myself.  Thalia enters the room with Chaud standing behind in the hallway with a fairly worried look on her face. 

“I talked with the Shadow Council, they were aware of Sophie taking Skitz but they knew nothing about Sophie taking Eva.  We’ve got to find Eva.”

               They talked with Shadow Council?  I have to go see Shadow Council, I have business with them.  I will have to keep close with this group to get a chance to be near Shadow Council.  Ugh, and we’ve got to find Sophie?  I do not like the idea of this, but I’ll help them get Eva back.  As we exit the room, Ravager goes back to the form of a shadow man and follows us back out to the van.  Chaud is messing with some buttons and such on his bike.

               “I can track where Eva is from the communicator she’s wearing, so follow me.” Chaud says.  I’ve never quite realized before how odd his accent is, a mix of British and Scottish to it. 

               We pass back through the portal and keep driving out through the flat and grassy lands.  We make our way towards a cave surrounded by grassy bush.  Thalia says something to herself that I just quite cannot hear from where I am sitting back in the van.  She opens her door and steps out.

               “Eva is somewhere around here, let’s go looking through the brush to find her.” She says to me.

               I leave out from the SUV and go poking around in the brush, it seems like it could be the same size as the nearby cave taking forever to comb through.  I hear Thalia speaking lightly to herself again and I really don’t think that she ever thought for a moment that Eva was even out here.

               “I’m not finding anything in these bushes,” I tell Thalia as I stand up to begin walking back to the van.

               Suddenly, the sound of gunfire echoes from inside the cave.  Thalia begins running toward the mouth of the cave and I see shadow shoot from the van to the mouth of the cave.  I’m dumbstruck by it all; they wanted to distract me while they saved Eva.  Why even have me come with them if I couldn’t be trusted to assist them with this?  I watch as Ravager blackens the cave and Thalia multiplies herself into another and her multiple enters the cave.  Suddenly, I see a figure running out of the darkness towards me with blonde hair whipping behind her. 

Sophie!  Sophie comes tearing my way, grabs me and suddenly everything starts jumping by.  One moment I see a tree by me, the next a stream, everything is jumping so quick there is no way that we are running.  Sophie must be a teleporter!  Where is she taking me to, why is she taking me?  Why could they not trust me to help them?  Because of their distrust, now I’m captured by this frightening woman.  Why can I not break free of her?

Katherine: Narrative 3

We all pick up some of the daggers and spears that lay around, Chaud picks up all of the orbs from the colossus.  I choose one staff and one dagger to keep.  I don’t really have much of anything on me except the clothes on my back and if things like this happen frequently then I suppose I might need these.  Everyone starts to walk off in their own directions staring down at the daggers or spears that they had picked up. 

               “What are you guys doing?” I ask Thalia as she throws her dagger at the ground and stares at it.

               “Play around with the weapons we got from the elders.  Try throwing them and things.  They do different kinds of things.  Try to keep away from others, just in case it messes up.” 

               Okay, so I pull out the staff and walk off toward the edge of nearby forest.  I swing it around and… nothing.  I try hitting it on a tree and nothing.  I try whapping it on the ground to nothing.  I don’t get what I am supposed to do with this thing to make it behave other than just a staff.  I try and peer over at what other people are doing with their stuff; I can’t really tell what they are doing.  I guess that I will play with my powers and these weapons. 

               The hum of electricity is buzzing in my ears feels so relaxing.  I hold up my staff and channel the heat energy out of me as an electric stream to one of the trees and it bounces back to the staff and then returns back to the tree and the staff.  That is neat, normally my lightning zap only shoots out once, but it looks as though as long as I carry this staff, it will keep relaying the electricity back again and again.  I bring out the dagger that I picked up and now try seeing what I can do with it. 

               I throw it out and it wedges into the ground ahead of me.  There’s a low hum of electricity in my ears so I have just a smidge of heat energy stored in my still to try it again and see what it does.  So I shoot off an electric charge out toward the dagger and it turns into a plasma sphere that goes from the tip of the staff to the dagger and stops.  That most definitely is weird, I like what the staff does with me electric output, but I don’t know how I feel about this plasma thing.  I head back to the SUV to meet up with everyone else.  Most people are back already and chatting about how to get to the Shadow Council, which perks my attention though I play uninterested. 

               Eventually everyone starts filing back into the van, or what is left of us starts filing into the SUV.  Except for Chaud, and I don’t know what he did with his orbs that he had but I can’t see them anywhere on him now.  Or Thalia’s staff for that matter.  Perhaps they shrunk. 

               Not too far from here we reach into something they call a portal that will apparently jump us to where they need to be.  It’s a fairly huge looking metallic frame with bluish electric light inside the framing.  The guys that operate this thing are saying that we can’t take the SUV in but Chaud is telling us no worries and to push through anyway.  Well, if I had to pick, I guess dying in a portal accident beats whatever unknown horror Sophie could produce.  Bracing myself for whatever might happen as we drive through does nothing, neither does the car going through the portal. 

We all come out the other side, the van still works, not bad.  Outside the windows of the SUV, there are buildings that rise high into the sky.  There are so many, not all reach to the same height but the size of these buildings seems so excessive.  Would a single city really need buildings of this height to accommodate the needs of its residents?  As we continue driving through these buildings, we reach a tall fenced gate opening with four people wearing all the same black uniform on each side of the gate.  Thalia begins to stop the vehicle as we approach the fence.  You can see the looks of recognition the guards give to Thalia and Chaud but change when they glance over Ravager and me.

Katherine: Narrative 2

Something is going on a good distance away, but it as loud as all get out.  They two of them start heading toward an SUV where some douche looking guy is driving.  I run over and hop in.  There’s no sense just staying here, and I don’t think my look alike will mind.  The SUV starts heading off toward where the sound came from.  We get closer and the crashing and booming noises have stopped and we come up to some scruffy man on a white motorcycle but as the light catches it, it shines a soft blue and next to it looks like something standing within the shadow of it.  It looks as though a shadow is standing up in the shadow of this motorcycle.  

My twin, the driver, and the short woman get out of the SUV to start talking with him.  I learn their names and think I have a general idea about them.  My look alike is called Thalia and she can split into multiple of herself.  The guy on the motorcycle thing is Chaud, nothing to note about him except he has a motorcycle and has an odd accent.  The short woman with the odd looking hair is called Eva, she can stomp an earthquake.  The shadowy thing must have been what blacked me out back there; I guess he came over here to check on Chaud when I got my sight back.  

“Who’s the bird?” he asks, indicating me with a shake of his head making his shaggy hair shake with his movement.

“Um, I haven’t really asked.”  Thalia answers him then turns towards me.  “So what’s your name?”

“Katherine.” I answer.  

Suddenly, this skinny blonde girl jumps out from the forest line and grabs our driver while saying “I just need him for a bit, thanks!”  

WHAT?!  Who the hell was that creepy girl and why did she just run off with that guy?  And why are they just still standing around like nothing just happened?

“Um, should we go get him?”  I try to ask while sounding calm.  I fail miserably.

“Oh no, that’s just Sophie,” Thalia responds.  

I guess it really is only me who found that scary.  We all begin to board back into the SUV except for Chaud who remains on his bike.  I don’t even know where I am or where I was going, so why not go with these people.  They are going to see some people called the Shadow Council; I don’t think that I have ever heard of the Shadow Council.  Apparently Thalia and Chaud work for them, I don’t know about the icky shadow thing sitting way in the back or Eva.  Apparently they went out on this mission of some sorts that Thalia didn’t do so well on, or at least the driver we just had, Eva, and Thalia did.  Chaud was sent out to mock her and the shadow thing; they call him Ravager, just sits there all shadow-like I suppose.  As we continue down the road, Thalia is having a hard time focusing on the road because bright light is shining directly into her eyes.    

Looking out through the front of the window, there are centaurs in the road firing arrows toward a bright colossal man in the road.  The man has four orbs circling him; the arrows the centaurs are shooting at him are continuously blocked by the orbs.  Eva and I step out from the SUV as Ravager refuses to remove himself from under the backseat of the SUV and Thalia is still in the driver’s seat as well as standing outside of the vehicle with us.  I to the front of the van and press my hand to the hood and absorb the remaining heat inside of me.  I don’t have to absorb the heat through my hands like my life absorption works, but it’s not like I’m slapping my face on to the hood of the van to soak it in either.  

Eva stomps her feet and the colossus sink down into the ground to its thighs as he begins to swing blindly about him.  It seems that he is unable to see or he would not even be flailing about as he is, it is though he is trying to knock us down with a swing but cannot seem to find where we are.  One of the orbs drops down into the earth and begins to spin around him, almost digging him out from the ground.  I draw the energy in and shoot out a bolt of electricity towards the colossus but my attack is blocked by one of the orbs continuing to circle around him.  Eva stomps her feet again and the colossus sinks further up to his chest.  Then Thalia standing outside of the vehicle throws a pink shimmering light toward the spinning orbs and it gets squelched by their movements.  Eva stomps her feet again and the colossus sinks down to its neck and another orb begins to aid the other to try and dig the colossus out from its earthen trap.  

Chaud jumps up, his motorcycle wrapped around his body like some sort of mechanical suit and he punches down into one of the orbs sending it right into the skull of the colossus.  As the colossus collapses, so do the orbs that were spinning around it.  They all sit idly now and the centaurs give us a nod, leave their arrows and head back into the wood.  Their arrows are enormous comparatively to our size, the tips are like daggers and the arrows that are in one piece still are like spears.  Suddenly that thin, evil looking blonde child comes bounding out of the forest again and grabs Eva’s hand.  

“I need her to help with training Skitz,” Sophie squeaks out as she runs off with Eva into the woods.

And again, looking around the group everyone acts like this occurrence is as natural as breathing.  I am really starting to wonder if I should even stay with these people, this crazy child just comes out of nowhere every time they stop the van so far to run off with someone.  How many more people has this Sophie taken?  What exactly does she do with the people she takes?  I crawl back into the SUV and press myself against the far side, away from the door.  If that girl is going to try and take me anywhere, I will grab everything I can to not let her take me.  I will not go quiet and without fight.  

Katherine: Narrative 1

My head aches as I groan and stretch out where I lay, my fingers sliding over the dirt that I am laying in. I cannot help but to smile as I feel the sun shining down warming the back of my long black hair. I begin to roll over to feel the warmth of the sun on my face when something presses into my back as I roll. I open my eyes and in front of them, a pair of feet. Immediately I jump up and scoot back until I can feel myself pressed against something else. I jump up and turn around, another person. Who are these people? There are about ten of these guys with weird knives, daggers maybe?

Who are these guys? I have seen these weapons before but I do not know who these guys are. Why would I know their weapons but not them? Whoa! The guy I rolled into just got cut by the guy standing next to him with one of those strangely familiar daggers, and he is all smiling about it! This creep is seriously enjoying getting cut with these things. Freaks.

The sound of tires breaking on dirt nearby and doors opening are nearby. Is it more of these freaks? I don’t even know what I am going to do with the ones in front of me. Suddenly four of the guys next to me go chasing after a bike. These guys must be retarded or something, they’re all over me for no reason and then they are off chasing the next thing that moves? I charge up on the masochistic freak in front of me and grab his neck as two guys get taken by something. I don’t know, irrelevant right now.

As soon as my skin touches him, I can feel the pull of his life into my when suddenly that freak stabs his dagger into my arm. The pain of the dagger piercing my arm hurts but I cannot let go, I feel the dagger doing exactly what my hands are doing to him. Suddenly everything goes dark and I can hear much going on around me, something piercing into someone, slashing? I can’t see but I can feel the dagger pulling life from me as I pull it back into me from this freak. I don’t quite know how much more my arm can possibly stand with the knife in there as I hold him off the ground; thankfully this dumbass is just holding the dagger in my arm instead of actually causing any more pain to it. I hear a loud clapping and something flying back. What the hell is going on? I cannot see and I need to get away from all of this.

“Do you need any help over there?” A woman’s voice, she sounds genuine. Well, she speaks so that puts her a million times smarter than these freaks so far.

“Yeah, that would be awesome.” My voice sounds so deep compared to hers. The body goes limp in my hands and the knife falls to the ground. I drop him and try to catch myself without making it too apparent. Whoever this is, I do not want her to think this hurt me. Let them think I felt nothing, hopefully that will intimidate them not to try and attack me. I still cannot see where she is or where the rest of these freaks are.

“What are you doing out here?” Suddenly my vision is back and I can see the woman that I’m talking to. She could be my twin, minus that she is about half a foot shorter than me so she’s got to be somewhere around five and a half feet tall seeing as I am six foot two. Her raven black hair reaches far down her back. Mine does not reach as far but then again, she is shorter than I am. Thankfully we do have some differences between us or I’d swear this woman must be related to me in some way. Her slate grey eyes are more round where mine are more of an almond shape

“Living.” I honestly don’t know why I am out here, or how I got here. I just know that I was waking up from a nap and there were people here. She does not need to know all this. “And you?”

“Helping you. Where are you from?” Standing next to her is a short and stout woman with forest green dreadlocks. No, those aren’t dreadlocks, there is something much more stiff about her hair than it should be. She looks at me as if I am wasting her time being out here talking with her companion.

“I don’t know, not here?” Okay, what do I know about me? I’m tall, average build, black hair, grey, eyes, I can suck life energy through my hands, and I can use heat to-CRASH!