Book 1: The Chaos Keys

Chapter Fourteen: Ethan☄️

The moment the bell began to chime, Ethan had already leapt from his seat and sprinted for the classroom door. He barreled through the hallways, much to he annoyance of those around him, narrowly avoiding collision. They were all permitted a 10 minute break before the next class was to begin. But he could not wait that long.

He first darted to the MT room, pushing open the door and tossing his bag onto a ch right beside the doorir. He didn't look too closely, but it seemed empty. It wouldn't make sense for anyone to be there this early anyway. He dashed off again without a moment's hesitation, just pushing the door so it closed by itself.

He skidded to a halt at the doorway of the room where Drake had all of his other classes. He pushed open the door a bit too eagerly, and it bounced against the wall with a resounding bang. His enthusiasm however was for naught, because the person in the classroom definititely wasn't Drake.

It was a lady, with mostly grey hair slicked back into a neat bun. She had glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, and her eye twitched with restrained irritation when the door hit the wall. It was the school's librarian, who was also the general town librarian, who also didn't seem very fond of Ethan and his rambunctious behaviours. She could be 80 or she could be 180, that woman looked as if she'd been living for a few centuries.

"Towers." She said drily, pushing her glasses up on her nose with the tip of a whithered finger. "To what do I owe the... Pleasure."

"Oh, uh have you seen Mister Drake?" Ethan asked eagerly, apologetically patting the door, as if that would fix it.

"I don't know the exact location of every single teacher in the school." The librarian said, frowning. Each of her words was sounded out, slowly and clearly.

Ethan kept looking at her hopefully, and she sighed, arranging the papers on her desk.

"He's in a meeting in the staffroom."

"Thank you!" He said, rushing off again. He caught her face with the barest hint of a smile, and he grinned to himself. 

After looking around aimlessly for a minute, he found himself back at the MT classroom. He spushed open the door, grabbed his bag and then took off again. He had put it down so he wouldn't have to run around with it, but he quickly decided that the assuring weight on his back would stop him from running as quickly through the halls and hopefully stop him from getting hurt.  When he got distracted, he had a tendency to start running again, which never ended well. It worked, for a bit, until eventually his mind began to wander. He was still fixated on the silver symbol etched into the collar of the service dog. He'd have to remember to  try to decipher it later. Maybe if he compared it to the identical one on his book, he could-

His momentary distraction caused him to almost run into a figure that seemed to come out of nowhere. They barely avoided him, but he ended up tripping anyways. He hit the floor, and closed his eyes for a moment, temporarily dazed. When he opened them, some of his stuff had fallen out of his bag and was scattered on the tile. He hadn't even realised his bag was open. In fact he'd been pretty sure he'd closed it, but his fleeting memory often betrayed him. He couldn't even process what had fallen out of the bag, his eyes glazed over and black spots shielding his vision. 

He looked up to see the person he'd almost hit into, who was already walking away without so much as an acknowledgement in his direction. The figure was dressed rather strangely, completely hidden by what looked like a black- cloak. They had a weird feeling about them that Ethan couldn't quite pinpoint the source of.

"Sorry!" He called, but the person didn't look back.

He shrugged and grabbed his stuff, shoving it into his bag and making sure to zip it this time. He scrambled off of the floor, ignoring the soreness from the fall, and dashed off again. He wasn't focussed on anything at all at the moment, except finding Drake.