Soar: Chapter 4: Part One

by Kadelyn (FantasyAddict) in where books and computers exist in peace

A'n: It took a while, but here is Chapter Four Part One of Soar....enjoy!

Chapter 4

I waited impatiently until the end of class. What I wanted to talk to Crispin about was what would happen to my mom and family if something happened to me. Unfortunately, that fool left with the class, taking on a different form.

Flaed and Kwata walked with me to our next class.

“So, what did you and Mr. James talk about?” she asked. I looked sideways at her.

“He told me to ask Crispin about my schedule, and that he was as new here as I was,” I replied.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought he was gonna tell you about the glitch.”

Glitch? I wondered. I shook my head and followed them into class. The teacher this time was a woman, and I could immediately tell that she was neither human nor Double Breed, but something different. I wondered if Kwata felt the same way, because we were both looking at each other with an empathetic look on our faces.

“Class, this is your Mathematics class. We will be learning the entire core classes here, like Math, for example. Math is first, then reading. After reading, you will go to lunch. Afterwards, you have Social Studies and Science. Okay?”

The class just stared. One student lifted their hand.

“What race are you?” he asked.

The teacher smiled. “You’ll know very soon,” she answered, growing scaly with a wicked smile on her face. She sprouted a nose, a snout with seriously flaming breath (stinky and literally flaming), and a long tail.

Kwata, Flaed, and I just sat there as everyone screamed and ran out of the room. As the dragon turned back to her human form, a smile once again appeared on the face.

“At least we know we have some hard-hearted children here,” she said. “This isn’t actually for core classes, as you can tell.”

Flaed smiled sweetly. “This is a class for hardening your heart and getting rid of your emotions, which Kwata and I have already done.” Smarty. The teacher looked at me.

“I saved a kid from falling off the top of a cathedral, and the homework I had in America was scarier than you,” I said. “I’m already hard-hearted. I’m just not emotionless.”

“We’ll change that,” the teacher said. “Now, I would like for the three of you to take out your notebooks and copy down what I am about to put on the board.” We did as told. Here is what she wrote, and this is my handwriting:

Hardening your heart is essential to surviving on the battlefield. SO is discarding your emotions. Write a one page essay on how you can harden your heart. Each page must have at least one very agreeable fact as to how to do it. The essay is due at the end of class every day, and if not finished, then due at the beginning of class the next day.

I looked at the woman like she was crazy, but she just smiled at me.

I rolled my eyes and paid attention to the rest of class.

When lunch came around, I was still hanging with Kwata and Flaed. We had cheeseburgers and French fries with a Dr. Pepper.

“This is like a mini-civilization,” I said, looking around. There were perhaps four or five thousand people here in the cafeteria alone, with many more in class or wondering halls.

“That’s what Crispin intended,” Flaed said, eating her salad. She was a vegetarian. “He wanted all of us to coexist peacefully, so he’s rounding up Nephilim from all around the world and bringing them here.”

“But there has to be some opposite, evil organization,” I said, taking one of her tomatoes. She glared at me and took a French fry. “What? I like tomatoes.” Kwata sighed and rolled his eyes.

“There is an opposite, evil organization,” she said. “We know it exists, but we don’t know the name of it. There are rumors that it is somewhere in Asia. People heard that it was in Australia. Most rumors say that it’s in different sections in the world, teaching the Nephilim that they round up that human beings are evil beings that need to be destroyed. We are fighting that.”

“Most of the kids I know are evil beings,” I said matter-of-factly.

She glared at me. “Monster-like beings, Vincent. Be serious.”

“Oh.” I ate a French fry. “Kwata, how long have you guys been here?” Kwata shrugged, and then the lights went off.

Flaed grabbed my arm and practically crushed it. She was terrified of the dark. Deathly terrified. Kwata wrote that relayed that to me in a message he wrote. I pulled them both up and headed to my room. The halls were chaotic, with people screaming and grabbing onto each other. Twice I lost Kwata and had to find him.

We headed to my dorm room. I had a flashlight in my backpack, which had miraculously appeared under my bed. Flaed was about to break my arm, and I was grimacing in pain.

“Here’s the plan until the lights come on,” I whispered. “We try to go to the Dragon’s Lair-” that lady who said stuff about hardening your heart- “and then sit there until the lights come back on. Let’s just hope that my battery doesn’t go out by then.”

“Okay,” Flaed said in a shaky voice. “Kwata agrees. Signore, ti prego aiutami.” I rolled my eyes. I don’t know what the heck that meant, so I just turned and headed out of the dorm.

The halls had quieted down, but we still lost Kwata a few times. A few people pointed me out and then tried to gather around my flashlight, but I swung my bag like a crazy person and scared them away.