fragile time

~chapter 4~

Chapter 4: "Aw, A Secret Admirer!"

~✶~

Finally, it was lunch. Throughout this bizarre day, I hadn't had time to eat breakfast. I set my bowl of Dragon Blood down on a round table near the windows of the huge cafeteria. The walls faded from yellow to blue– our school colors, and different paintings and banners hung from them.

The windows looked upon the dragon-riding arena, which is something I always loved to see. I considered myself to be a decently good dragon rider, as I grew up with a pet dragon named Frost. Taylor had a dragon, too, but she's never been interested in dragon riding. Unlike her, I would be on our school's team— if I wasn't so young.

In the middle of the arena stood three gold spheres, surrounded by different obstacles. Obstacles could consist of fireballs, rocks thrown, moving platforms, smoke, and so much more. The player would ride their dragon through the obstacle course, starting on their side, and try to grab one of the gems and bring it back to their team's 'home base'. However, two dragons from different teams go at a time, so they have to fight each other for the sphere. After one dragon brings it back to home base, round two starts. This continues until the third round is over, and the team with the most spheres wins! I know, it sounds dangerous and confusing– but it's really fun to watch and play.

"Your head alright?" Xavier questioned as he took a seat next to me, taking a bite of his apple.

"I'm fine now– vampires are fast healers." I flashed him a smile before I took a spoonful of blood. The warm, tangy liquid spread out over my tongue, satisfying my craving. "Where are the others?"

Xavier grunted, clearly in a bad mood, "How do you expect me to know? I didn't have classes with any of them. Where's Lillith?"

As if on request, Lillith appeared with Taylor and Blade by her side. All of them took their usual seats, laying their lunches down on the table. Taylor with unicorn blood, Lillith with various berries, and Blade with some sort of meat I didn't recognize. Taylor shrugged off her leather jacket as Blade greeted Xavier and I.

All six of us – Taylor, Emily. Xavier, Lillith, Blade, and I – had matching jackets. Each level had their own color. They gave us jackets to wear that were our color, but the rules never said we had to wear those. We each have our own custom jacket of the role we play in our group, and our names.

Taylor's jacket said 'The Befriender T. Summers'. Out of all of us, she was the one to talk to others. She almost knew everything about everyone because she was such an outgoing person. If we had some sort of social problem, Taylor was always the one to fix it. A lot of the time, she would pretend to be friends with someone just to get information about them and bring it back to us.

Blade's jacket, similar to Taylor's said 'The Spy B. Wixx' Blade had shadow magic, so he could become invisible and become a demon at will. He usually snuck into places he wasn't supposed to be in, and listened to private conversations. If Taylor couldn't get someone to trust her enough to tell her something, Blade would spy on them. He was also useful for stealing– excuse me, borrowing things.

'The Power X. Spark' was what Xavier wore on his back. He was always ready for a fight, and he took any challenge that was thrown at him. He could easily burn something with the flick of a wrist, so he was always our first line of defense when it came to battle. I could always count on him to do a tough task.

Lillith's jacket fit her the best, in my opinion: 'The Healer L. Wixx.' Whenever some terrible disaster happened, or after a brutal battle... whenever we were bleeding, bruised, wounded, even dying, Lillith would always be there. With quick words jumping from her lips, and a swish of her wand, we would be healed. If it weren't for Lillith, most of us would be dead by now. Really, she's the backbone of our friends.