Abbadon Rising - (NaNoWriMo2016)

Chapter Seven

BETRAYAL and shock coursed through Abi's veins like fire, and her gems began to glow with anger. She could feel the heat rising to her face and quickly tamped down on her power to avoid being noticed by the man and the woman who were speaking about her.

'That backstabbing, arrogant bastard!' Abi raged, 'He was just being nice to me so he could report to those people about me,' Abi's gems glowed like hot embers on her forehead. She channeled her range into perfect calm and put the book silently into her knapsack. Then she stood up serenely and walked past the two people speaking without a sound. Abi's face was perfectly calm as she passed them, and only let her shock at seeing them show once she was sure they couldn't see her.

The man and the woman who Pierce reported to were the Abbadon and the King. They paid her no mind as she exited the library and Abi let out a sigh of relief and clutched the strap of her bad tightly. Her own rapid heartbeat echoed lightly in her ears and she still simmered with contained rage at Pierce. She strode back to the training hall and found her datapad, tapping on Aiden's contact and quickly tapping out a message.

"Pierce... betrayed... Abbadon and King... and," Abi muttered to herself, "Send." She tapped the send button and her message sent to Aiden. The gems on Abi's wall were lit up to indigo, meaning that it was almost dinnertime. She stood up and went into the mess hall only to see Pierce sitting at the teams table. Her face hardened into stone as she walked stoically towards them, and then got some food and sat down without a word.

"Abi!" Tal exclaimed happily, "How was your day?" Abi shrugged noncommittally and returned to her food, picking at it without eating much. She couldn't even taste the food, and she could feel Pierce's eyes on her from two seats away.

"Did you find what you were looking for in the library?" Dario asked.

"Yeah," Abi replied, "And so much more." The rest of her team looked at her quizzically and Abi ignored their looks. Pierce's betrayal set heavy in her stomach, and Pierce gave her an especially weird look.

'Ignore him,' Abi told herself, 'He was never your friend. Just pretend like he never helped you or anything.' Abi shook her head a little to clear her thoughts when all of a sudden there was a large boom, seeming to come from the end of the training wing. All of the Elementals in the mess hall jumped to their feet and the walls of the mess hall lit up with all the colors of the trainee's gems.

"Come on guys, let's go see what that was!" Dario said to the team, and they all nodded at each other. Abi followed team Abbadon as they sprinted to the end of the wing, past all of the other team's common rooms and to the end of the training wing. A cool breeze blew in from the night air outside through a big hole in the wall of the Castle. The edges of the hole were singed and blackened and the air smelled of smoke.

"Duck!" Abi yelled as she spotted a bomb flying in through the hole in the wall and the whole team scuttled for cover behind various tables and boxes in the hallway. The bomb exploded and shook the building once again, and Abi jumped out from her hiding spot and sprinted towards the hole in the wall. She easily jumped through it and began flinging fireballs in the direction of the figure who threw the bombs. The figure was wearing a long cloak with a cowled hood that misconstrued their face, and Abi couldn't see any visible gem pattern glowing under their hood. The rest of the team followed behind her and also began to assault the figure. Jo and Tal ran towards them and hit them with a frontal assault while Pierce and Dario fought the henchmen who appeared from the forest next to the Castle as soon as Abi had begun to attack the figure. Marcus joined Abi on her attack on the figure, shifting the ground underneath of their feet to keep them off balance while Abi pelted them with fireballs. Marcus tripped the figure by suddenly causing the ground to rise up underneath of them.