The Prophecy ( The Replacement Trials #1)

Chapter 3

Aura's POV

"Nimue! Hey, Balkas!" I call out to her, racing down the hall to catch up. It's like she's entered this separate universe and can't hear me. Tapping her on the shoulder, she grabs my hand and flips me over her shoulder. Landing hard, I felt the ground beneath me crack slightly. It just so happens that the fae and elf races are incredibly resilient and aren't easy to break. Hence, it's easier to break our surroundings than it is to break our bodies.

"That was uncalled for. I didn't even hurt you this time!" I groaned, wincing from the movement it took to stand back up, I grabbed my low back and I was well aware that I resembled an old crone, much like Coven leader Wilhomina. Not that I cared given that I had given Nimue a reason. Stretching my arms above my head and moving from side to side, I worked at the soreness in my muscles and feeling a pop in my hip, the pain lessening from a sharp stabbing to a low, manageable throb.

"I am so sorry. Totally uncalled for, I'm just stuck in my head. I was thinking about this mission and all the trouble we're going to face and how likely it is that we'll die and how my parents won't be bothered to care if I do die because they believe that "If you go down in battle then you were just doing your life's work" and I don't even know if we're going to survive going to see the King and-"

"Ok, you need to relax. Let's go sit down and we can hash out a plan to make sure that we do everything we can to not die. I think that's a good idea, so I don't care if you agree." I cut her off and march off in the direction of the stone benches that line the hallways. I remember when they were installed before I actually started attending the school, and there were more now than there used to be, so it was easier to work in the hallways when your dorm was busy and loud. I spent a lot of time here with my sketchbook and some coloured pencils, drawing my thoughts and attempting to work through my problems. It had started as an exercise from the counselor I was being forced to see and later it became a part of my routine. I didn't turn around to make sure she followed me, given that the hallway was practically empty so I could hear her footsteps trail behind me.

"How could we possibly be able to plan out our attack when we've never fought this darkness or Plague or whatever it's called? It's not like Headmaster Grimhauld gave us a lot to go on" She questions and when I look over at her, she's watching me. Her eyes are filled with apprehension, and I see a part of her I never thought I would; she was unprepared, and it made her wary to any inkling of the outcome. With most missions, we're given some sort of profile on the people we're going to be up against, to understand the best way to take them out with the least number of casualties, but it sounds to me that no one understands the fighting style or the plans that our enemy has. It's as though this threat appeared out of nowhere and they expect us to be able to just jump into the fight with no prior knowledge or time to investigate. Had we been given some time beforehand, we might have been able to spend a few days going through the library that the academy had and tried to find a mention of "The Plague" so that we weren't going in blind.

"I honestly couldn't tell you. But what I do know is that the longer we think about it, the more likely it is that we're going to stress out about it so, you and I are going to go to the library and we're going to study as many past missions as we can. Maybe one of the records has a mention of the prophecy or something that could help us win." I grab her hand and shudder at how cold it is. Normally, her temperature runs warm and I always overheat when we do hand to hand combat. 

She's frigid and I know it's because she's shutting down, I can only remember one other time that this happened and that was when she was informed that her cousin, Melody, was killed in battle and that her family had made a decision to not hold a funeral because she was killed from behind which they believed meant that she was trying to run. It was seen as cowardly and since they were a fairly high ranking family in the elven community they didn't want to acknowledge the possibility that Melody went down without a fight. They never found out who killed her, and it caused Nimue to have nightmares about what could have been, similar to mine and the Headmaster had asked me to help her as best I could. That was the one and only time we had been civil with each other because I had some level of understanding when it came to her situation, you know, besides now because we have to learn how to at least tolerate one another if we're going to survive the King's quest, which is what I'm now calling it. I would have named it after the prophecy, but I don't know what that's called so the name is a work in progress.