Unanimous

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

He carefully grabbed the big, dusty book that lay on his bedside table.  

He flipped the pages, knowing exactly what he was looking for. 

He stopped. 

Sedation  

That's what was written in dark letters on the top of the slightly aged page.  

'This will do,' he thought as he absorbed the information. 

He closed the book and put it back in its rightful place.  

~

To say the students of 502B were feeling indignant would be an understatement.  

The teachers had pleaded them to go to class, but the younglings would have none of it.

By the way, a youngling is a term they use frequently in Fortania. It means they have already passed changing, but are not yet adults. Words such as teenagers and adolescents are absent in their vocabulary.

The reason they were so angry was that three of their fellow students vanished into thin air while they weren't allowed to do anything but attending school. 

It apparently hadn't been enough that Kenneth had disappeared three weeks ago, because only nine days later Kobe, a human boy, was suddenly gone too. 

At first everyone assumed Kenneth and Kobe had taken off together, but when Gail, the innocence itself, was nowhere to be found since yesterday 502B knew something was terribly wrong.

The teachers had long left, probably to go inform headmistress Collins, and now the younglings were sitting on the cold floor of the hallway. Sneaking out wasn't an option since the school had a lot of supervisors who were guarding the exits.

"Are you sure disobeying our superiors is the right way to handle this? There are severe punishments for defying orders... Maybe we should just ask them politely if we can go to the police," Liesa, a cute looking nixie, asked, a worried look visible on her face.

Roxanne rolled her eyes and said : " Liesa, I love you and all, but you are seriously way too naïve for your own good. Do you honestly think they will just let a bunch of younglings ditch school to go to the police? All by ourselves and without permission of our parents? Liesa, it's still school."

Liesa nodded understandingly yet a bit reluctant.

There were twelve of them.  

First you had the humans. Fien, Anaïs, Tessa, Roxanne, Edward and Amandine.

I'm not really going into detail here, assuming the one who's currently reading this is in fact human.

The six left were all from different species.

You had of course Liesa, the nixie. Another word for nixie was water elf, though no one ever used that synonym.

"This sucks," Jaron said.

This gives me the perfect opportunity to introduce Jaron without making this boring and extremely forced.

Jaron was the class' very own wood elf. That made him have a strange obsession with the colour green and always wear comfortable clothes in which he could jump around as much as he wanted.

"Indeed," Nina muttered.

This dialogue sure makes my job a lot easier.

She-dragons were very rare in Fortania, since most of them preferred to live in colder areas seeing as their body temperature lay about 5 degrees higher than the one of any other being. Yet Nina and her family chose to live here. Nina always said her parents just wanted her to have a proper education and that they didn't care about anything else. Understandable, since Tormundia was the only school where both supernaturals and humans could follow classes together.

A legend says that the name Tormundia came from the name Thor and the Latin word mundus. The school is rumoured to have been founded by the god of war, Thor, who wanted creatures to cooperate and defend our world against evil. Hence the word mundus, which means world.

Though this etymology is pretty cool, most of the students just say it comes from the word 'torment', which in their opinion is just another word for school.

Explaining the term she-dragon really wasn't the hardest thing. The name described what it was pretty well. A female dragon. Nina could turn into the famous mythological creature anytime she wanted which everyone thought was pretty cool.

There were only a few who had seen Nina in her dragon form. She couldn't exactly transform anywhere seeing how huge she was.

On the ground next to Nina sat Amber, a siren. Sirens could either be extremely nasty or extremely friendly. Luckily Amber was the latter.

I know you're thinking about mermaids right now, but don't worry. Amber did not have a tail.

The people of Fortania could only pray that they wouldn't come across sirens very often and that if they did it would be a kind hearted one. Sirens namely had the very threatening power to control someone with their voice. Imagine not having a free will and only being a pawn in a siren's game. The thought was simply terrifying.

Though sirens had a very bad reputation, Amber was anything but evil. She only used her power if really necessary.  

Next you had Vic. Anyone would describe him as a jolly and very nice person. Yet... you couldn't fully call him a person, since he was half horse. The proper word for that phenomenon was a centaur. He had the head and torso of a human and the behind (including the tail) and legs of a0 horse.

When he was in a good mood he sometimes let people ride on his back to class. That way he saved many people from having a mental breakdown. Tormundia was huge because of all the practical classes such as power managing and defend class.

And last but not least there was Matthieu. He had one of the most envied abilities of all time. He was a shifter. While people like Vic were permanently half-animal, Matthieu could turn into any kind of living thing anytime he wanted. That's why you could never have a private conversation when he was around. No one would even notice the little bug that would be very present.

His power turned out to be very useful sometimes. While Amber only had to use her power to get something, Matthieu was also very famous for getting his way with the use of his puppy dog eyes.

"Oh, come on! Stop being so negative, everyone! There has to be a way to go to the police without getting caught skipping school," Anaïs said. The short haired human crossed her arms with a displeased look on her face.

"And how are we supposed to do that, Anna?" Roxanne asked sceptically. " They have supervisors near every exit, remember? Got any ideas?"

Anaïs suddenly seemed deep in thought.

"Actually..."

She turned to look at Amber, who had been quietly observing everything. Anaïs grinned which made Amber pull a face.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Anaïs smiled mischievously.  

"I think it's time you demonstrated how useful your powers really are."