The Royal Knight Academy

Chapter 19: Caught in the Rain

At that moment, I was absolutely heartbroken and terrified. The dragon protecting its only egg was gone. I stood up from where I was and looked at Xavier who was still staring at me. I carefully put the egg in my bag and looked at him angrily.

Then without hesitation, I sprinted towards him and when I got close, I shouted, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?" as I shoved him backward. "You killed the dragon! It wasn't trying to keep us from getting the flame! It was trying to protect its only egg from people who might want to steal it! Why did you shoot that arrow even though I yelled stop!?"

"HEY! What was that for!? Even better question, what's going on?"

"Well, I just saved an unhatched dragon from being squashed by a-!"

"No not that! I want to know what is going on with you! I mean, well, clearly you're a girl!"

I immediately froze as still as a statue for a moment. The words he said echoed through me. I then felt around my head and realized that something was missing.

"My helmet. MY HELMET!" I groaned, panicking. "No no no, it must've fallen off. You weren't supposed to find this out! It's over now. I need to get out of here."

As I was about to find a way out, he grabbed my arm.

"Leo, please," he calmly pleaded as I turned around. "Just, tell me the truth of what's going on."

I just stood there for a moment, thinking about what to do, and then sighed. I realized that I had to tell him the secret I had been keeping from him and the others.

"Okay. I'll tell you everything."

I took another deep breath as I started, "My real name is Lindsay and I snuck into the Royal Knight Academy."

While I was talking, Xavier stared at me with a kind of expression that showed that he was astonished, yet he wanted to hear more of my story.

"I wanted to be a knight because-"

Suddenly, when I was about to finish what I was saying, the ground started to rumble and shake. As each second passed, the floor seemed to be getting hotter and hotter. So many thoughts were racing through my head, but it was way worse than I could have ever imagined.

Where there were cracks in the mountain floor, a glowing orange liquid started to seep out. The second it started to rise out of the ground, I knew exactly what it was. Lava.

"We have to get out of here!" Xavier shouted.

"How are we going to get out? The door is still closed!" I yelled back frantically.

He looked around the mountain for a moment.

"Over there!" he responded as he pointed. "There's a narrow ledge spiraling along the mountain wall! It seems to lead to an exit, hopefully out of this mountain. That's our ticket out of here!"

He quickly ran to where the ledge began.

"Come on!" he motioned for me to follow him.

As I ran towards him I grabbed my helmet that fell off earlier and put it on my head. At the last second, I made the decision to run over to the pedestal, and picked up the glass jar holding the Forever Golden Flame. I wasn't going through all of that for nothing.

I finally made my way over to the ledge where Xavier was waiting.

"Okay," I said, climbing onto the ledge. "Time to get out of here."

We started to slowly but surely sidestep across the thin mountain ledge. It was so hard to balance on such a tiny surface without falling off. The lava rose higher and higher as we got closer to the top. When we were at the top, we leapt through the exit, and the lava suddenly stopped rising.