Mystik Realm: Celestinia Academy

Nine: Locked up with a ...something

The man disappears in a whirl of grey smoke, his dark cloak is the last thing I see of him. And then, a scream awakes me from the trance of whatever that was caused by the guy.

I turn back to face the room, the darkness has cleared away, and I don’t like the changes it’s made on the scenery.

Four grotesque demonic beings, they're in amongst the tables and chairs. They have dark oily grey skin that has a muddy texture, their eyes are milky white, no pupils. They have no hair on their heads, and they have long dagger-like nails that scrape against the tiles with the same skin-crawling screech of nails on a chalkboard. They are also probably nine feet tall, and they have razor sharp teeth that look like needles, long white needles that have been stuffed in each of their mouths so they overflow. I don't know what part is more terrifying, what part to fear more.

“Where is the Enmoira girl,” they speak as one, their voice grating against my bones, making me crumble to the floor, my limbs bending at awkward angles.

One of the demons grabs an entire table and launches it at the window behind my head, it smashes clean through the window and the table somehow hands upright on the other side of the window, spectacular. The shards of glass rain down on me, covering any uncovered skin with tiny little cuts, each little one burns like it's on fire. My tortured scream joins the rest of the cowering students.

Demina, somehow still on her feet, runs past me heading to her own dorms she doesn’t notice me, even though I reach out to her, my eyes already streaming tears from the pain.

I slowly get up from my seated position in a pile of glass shards, I feel blood dripping down from my brow to my eye, I wipe it before it can cloud my vision. I stagger out of the shattered window and hear loud crashes and screams from somewhere close behind me but I don’t look back, everyone's on their own. And anyhow, what would I be able to do in the bloodied state?

I wince as someone's scream from behind me cuts off and only a gasp replaces it.

I try to calm down more and think rationally. Rationally as monsters of all sizes, colours and appearances are surrounding me (and by colours, I don’t mean fluoro pink or metallic purple) most look grotesque like the ones in the cafeteria, some have more of a strange alluring beauty, like sirens in old fairy tales.

If I go around to the side entrance to the dorms, I could get inside and if not I could climb up to a window and open it and let myself in.

The idea is small but might be effective, I go round the monsters and try to move silently, I'm being silent enough apparently because none of them have noticed me yet. I think may have just jinxed it, I reach the side entrance and see Demina pass through it.

I race to the door but I am stopped in my tracks, a large beastial creature stands before me, four pairs of glowing red eyes fix me to the ground. Unable to move I stand before the large, four-headed dog, gross slobber drooling onto the ground, large pools of it surround the door. Worse than Harry Potter and Fluffy, he only had three heads he was also asleep most of the time, I wish I had some music to play this dog to sleep.

Stupid, why didn’t I run as fast a Demina and get through the door before whatever this is got in my way?

Running away? Not an option, fighting? Who the hell am I kidding, I can’t fight to save my life. Oops, bad wording Al, don’t go into that when in this situation that’s what’s at stake.

“Damn it!” I say to the heavens, throwing my arms up in frustration.

I look around for something, anything useful, I spot a rather large stick, it's still a dog, right? I pick up the stick and throw it at him, her I don’t even think I want to know it's gender. One of its middle heads catches it and the others start attacking it trying to steal the stick from it.

I attempt to run to my left to avoid the dog creature, it doesn’t notice me because it's too fixated on fighting over the stick. The other middle head has now gained possession of it, the other three heads are yapping and biting the head holding the stick to try and get it.

The dog fighting itself has moved in front of the side entrance so it is now practically sitting on the door. I have to find another way in, perfect, let’s see, plan B: climb up into a window, I prefered plan A.

I soon make it to a side that has not a lot monsters around it, I start to climb it but am stopped as a force that weighs several tonnes lays on my shoulders, pushing me back. I fall the five feet that I somehow managed to climb using the ivy and rough stone for hand and foot holds, I groan. Adrenaline is probably the only thing preventing me from passing out at this moment in time.

Damn, there’s a rule that no males are allowed in our dorm, this must be one of the enforcers of that rule. Pity, it’s not able to recognise gender.

What if I got my wings? As if on queue my wings appear but I have no time to examine them as an ogre-like creature lumbers around the corner and raises a club directly aimed at me, I jump and attempt to move my wings, I fail. The club misses me by inches and sprays dirt in my eyes as it hits the dry dirt underneath where I was standing a second before.

I try again, this time a is a little more successful, my wings flap and flail but I only make it two feet, before I crash down to earth, again. Third time lucky? I think to myself, it’s more of a plea though.

The ogre roars and charges straight at me I gasp in surprise and horror but before it can reach me a silver wolf darts in and bites the ogre and It howls in pain, “Slayer, good girl, get the big bad ogre!” a cute high voice that sounds familiar calls to the wolf cub.

“You’re okay right?” TJ asks impatiently.

“Y-yeah, I'm f-fine,” I answer slightly disoriented.

“Good, let’s get you to our dorm.”

“Our? What happened to you getting rid of me?” I ask.

“I can’t.” She doesn’t elaborate on the subject, instead, she helps me to my feet.

We walk back the way she came from and are soon we stop by an ivy-covered wall, the leaves look unnaturally saturated and have a slight blue tint to them. A couple of white flowers are visible from the outside but I can’t see anything else.

TJ, I wonder what it stands for, stops just in front of the ivy. She reaches out her hand and gently brushes it to the side, revealing a wooden door with steel hinges.

A secret door? Seriously? What happened to those being fictional…

She opens it and it gives a small whine of protest in the form of a screech against the stone floor.

Maybe I am in Harry Potter, all I need now is an evil mastermind and to become an orphan, maybe even fall in love with my best friends younger sister, not that she has one.

“I wasn’t even aware this was here,” I say trying to stop the silence between us that is only penetrated by occasional terrified screams.

“Not many are,” She sighs resigned as she leads me up the stone staircase.

“Shut the door as well.” she half bosses me but I oblige anyway closing the door on the monster infestation outside. I’d like to keep them outside anyway.

We enter the foyer and walk to some private lifts (I may have given up on calling them ‘elevator like things’ and just call them lifts). TJ types in the dorm number and we step inside, an awkward silence envelopes us immediately and neither of us breaks it. There is no computerized voice in this lift and I prefer it though it does nothing to quell the silence.

I shuffle my feet as the silence becomes almost unbearable even though we’ve only been in here for about five seconds. Luckily there’s a loud bing that signifies that we have arrived and the doors slide open to the corridor that leads us to our dorm

We arrive at our joint dorm, but as soon as we both step into the room; a bright light flashes and the door swings closed, locking us in, together.

She swears banging on the closed door with her fists in her frustration.

“Okay….?” I say confused as to why she wants to go out into that mess of monsters.

She slides down the door with her back against it, glaring at me like it’s my fault.

“What?” I say after about five minutes of her glaring at me.

“This is actually your fault.” I stare back at her incredulously.

“How is this my fault?”

“If you weren’t my roommate, and you didn’t need rescuing and you had learned how to fly, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

I gasp and look behind me, her rant had reminded me that I had wings. I look behind me, expecting two big beautiful wings.

Nothing, they’ve disappeared, well great, just perfect.

“Where’d they go?” then I add remembering what else she’d said, “And how does that make it my fault? It wasn’t my choice to be your roommate, it’s not my fault I’ve never used my wings, I’ve never been in a situation where that is necessary, And I might’ve needed rescuing, but it’s not my fault a huge four-headed dog blocked the side entrance, I couldn’t exactly climb up the side of the dorm, it had a barrier preventing me from doing that!” I also add in in a low whisper that she has no reason to be so angry, I couldn’t change our current roommate status.

She’s speechless for a couple of seconds before turning red in the face as anger boils over, oh my god, what have I done? How could that make her so angry?

Her breaths get faster and soon she starts to morph into something, something I cannot describe...