The War of Ice and Sea

Chapter 9 - Blood in the Halls

"We can put a Mental Asylum next to a dragonet school. It'll be fine," they had said, but they had been wrong. Those words had led to years of flashbacks and nightmares and trauma for Snowstorm. She had only been two, but she remembered that fateful night clearer than anything. She remembered the pain, the fear, the sadness that she had felt as blood stained her talons. Two of Snowstorms teachers, three of her classmates, one of them being her best friend, and two heroic strangers had died that night, leading to hundreds of horrific nightmares.

Twelve years ago...

Snowstorm had wok to screams, and she stumbled out the dormitory doorway, panic coursing through her veins. Her talons slid on some liquid coating the floor of the the hall and was horrified to see that her talons were dripping with dark blue blood. She ran down the hallways until she stopped at a pale body, stained with more dark blood and shrieked when she had recognised the freckled face as Seal, one of her best friends.

Sobbing, Snowstorm dragged her friend's body into a classroom, where her geography teacher, Alpine, had been taking refuge. Snowstorm stayed there, trying to calm down, but just minutes later she heard talonsteps echoing outside the classroom. Alpine and Snowstorm froze, barely daring to breathe. They had forgotten to lock the door, but if they did now, the dragon in the hallway would hear them. 

The talonsteps got closer and closer, before pausing. Snowstorm held her breath. What happened next Snowstorm seemed to see in slow motion. A dragon burst through the door, snarling, the blade in his talons heading for Snowstorm's throat. It was so dark that the dragon was just a silhouette, but in that split second, in a shaft of moonlight, Snowstorm spotted rippling scars that bubbled over one eye and disfigured his face. 

Alpine roared in fury and leapt in front of Snowstorm, shielding her. The blade ripped into his neck, and he collapsed to the floor, his talons slicing open some of the old scars on his attacker's face. The murderer had fallen, but his knife had stabbed her in the tail when he did. 

Snowstorm had screamed in pain as she watched her teacher who had sacrificed his life for hers bleed to death, rasping pained breaths. The killer had weakly tried to stab her again, but she had grabbed a glass paperweight and smashed it over his head. He fell to the ground, quiet, although Snowstorm wasn't sure if he was dead.

Tears had dripped down her snout, mixing into the blood as she sobbed in pain and fear. consumed by grief, Snowstorm's vision throbbed and blurred as her tail bled more. Eventually she become so became so weak that she collapsed into a pool of blood. But just before she passed out, she heard shouting that sounded so far away, despite the dragons being mere steps away. One IceWing with kind, concerned eyes, rushed over to her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a pair of dragons dragging off the murderer, just before everything went black.