Phoenix Rising

The Single Violet

I wake up to abrupt knocking on my door.

"Aris! Get up! We have a dumb tour to take and I have better things to do with my day."

"One second, I'm coming." I sigh and get out of bed. That was actually the best night's sleep I've had in a while, even though the dream itself was draining. Something about this place feels mentally rejuvenating.

I quickly get dressed. I find that I have my own personal lavatory. I brush my teeth and bathroom. I finish getting ready and open the door. Where am I? I stop to question. This entire situation is just ridiculous. Do I actually have powers? I still can't believe I crushed that can earlier.

Wisteria grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall and through the brown door.

"This is the dining hall" She says as we walk out into a open room with enough seats for one-hundred people.

"Why is there so many seats when you only have twenty bedrooms?" I ask.

"It is because each week a hall celebrates a ceremony fight and it rotates every week. Ours is this next week."

"So this is an auditorium and a cafeteria."

"That is correct. We also have specific meals picked out for us. Every breakfast we are forced to eat bland 'nutritious' cereal." She states monotone and makes a gagging gesture.

We walk to a banquet table that holds all of the utensils, a bowl and of course, cereal. We grab a bowl and serve ourselves cereal out of the cereal dispenser machine.

It really does look bland. We walk over to a table and eat our cereal with minimal discussion even though I wanted to say something to break the uncomfortable silence. The cereal is hard to swallow. Once we finish we stand up and put our bowl in an open in the wall and we continue out of the cafeteria. Then she brings me to the training area.

"These are two of the strongest people in the violet hall, this is Michael." She says gesturing towards the guy with the lighter eyes and he looks a lot older than anyone else here. "And this is Benjamin." She introduces me to the more muscular guy but he also has lighter eyes than mine and Violet's and he has dark brown hair. Both of their eyes are purple though.

"Do you want to duel?" dares Benjamin.

"I've never dueled someone before. I don't exactly know how to fight." I admit.

"It's easy." He smirks. He tosses me a sword and I barely catch it. He obviously expects me to fight, and Violet says nothing. I can't turn down a challenge.

He gets into a low stance and I awkwardly attack. As I swing my sword down upon him, he easily deflects it. As I stumble back a few steps he quickly uses his ability and I fall flat on my back. He takes his sword and raises it above me.

"I guess you will need a little more practice." He laughs menacingly.

"Leave him alone, he doesn't understand how we work yet. Give the kid a break." Violet says defensively.

"Fine, but I expect a better rematch one of these days."

Violet helps me up and walks me away from the violet training yard and cafeteria. We head towards the center of the school. She takes me into the middle of the six halls and shows me each one. They're all in rainbow order. She also shows me a last doorway, which is huge and pearly white, but it is locked.

"This is the white hallway. It is smaller than the rest and only the leader lives in this area. Red, Green, and Blue are the main halls. We are next behind them next to yellow. And the least frequent color is orange. If you ever get injured go directly there."

She takes me outside the building and we walk around the walls of the school. We then eventually make it to a giant garden.

"This is where the green harvesters go to retrieve our food source. And that building over there," She points at a giant place with high security and electric barbed wire fences. "Is the security ward where our prisoners go. Everyone in there defends the entire building and island. We don't have many prisoners, but the ones we do are in there. The majority of the guards belong to the red hall."

Then she brings me to the courtyard. "This is where we go once a year to announce new hall leaders and whenever we have an important announcement, we tell it here. This is also..." She is interrupted by a loud, roaring whiney. We both turn around and we see a ten foot black stallion leap into the air. This stallion is like no other, however. It is a flaming, dark, spiritually-hollow horse which has a pair of wings.

"Aris, Hurry up! This is Haizum!" Violet gasps as we both run hard from the creature. I look behind me. The horse is chasing after us and is bursting in flames. It makes a roaring sound as it chases after us.

"Why is it here?" I gasp as I run.

"Not exactly time for a history lesson. He was supposedly the archangel Gabriel's horse. It is a free spirit, we hardly ever see it, but no one can capture or tame it. It can't die, but can fight it and make it run off. I wouldn't try though, if I were you. Very few have been successful." She explains quickly in my head.

I have no idea how I know that this horse had once belonged to the archangel Gabriel, but the fact is imprinted on my memory like I learned it before I was in school. After getting followed by Haizum, we run down a hill to hide at the cemetery. Maybe we thought it would fall in a grave and stay dead this time but I don't know for sure. We run toward a hill and we nearly fall down it because of the steepness. After reaching flat land we almost run into a grave. It chases us into a fenced area and we are trapped. I see Violet turn around and fling the fence psychically across the field.

"Come on!" She yells as we try to escape. The horse blows fire out to the right and left and it continues around us into a large circle. We try to run through the small opening before the circle completely closed, but it is too late. The Fire Steed already trapped us in an inferno of flames.

"Wait here, I will protect you." Violet says courageously. She goes right up to me and gives me a passionate kiss.

She then pulls out her sword and slashes down at the horse. Before she reaches past its aura of flames, it had already evaded her attack. It then charges at her and she blocks its path with a wall of force. Violet attacks the horse again but as she nears the horse, it stands on its hind legs. She tries to jump out of the way, but it stomps down and tramples her, burning her alive. Its hooves let out a burst of flames and she disintegrates into ash nearly instantly.

Her ashes blow across the field like a plastic bag in a deserted city. Fire Steed pounds its hind legs to get ready to charge at me. It charges at me and I barely dodge the creature.

The shock of Violet's death haunts me but I don't have time to morn. I feel the heat of the flames burn my problems as it burns the grass where I was just standing on. I can feel heat from all directions and i feel faint and light headed. It quickly turns and charges again. This time I decide to grab Violet's sword and point it straight out instead of jumping out of the way. I stick the sword out, and the horse runs right through it. Instead of dying it keeps running strong and right before everything goes black I see the horse coming straight towards me. Right before it tackles me I close my eyes tightly and think of anywhere but here...