The Dark Princess

Brooke

A.N. from this chapter on, all "Pushes" or "Pulls" that Brooke does with magic are gonna be capitalized. Just to hopefully make things easier to understand.

Tomorrow was the designated day for out attack, and  my warning to Many had been sent. Hopefully she got it and got the princess out of the castle before I set it aflame. It was a dangerous job, what I was going to do. I hadn't told Milo of my plans; I was going to have to rely on his ignorance for this particular mission. I was planning to, quite simply, set the castle on fire, killing all those inside except for the princess, who, with her life recently threatened, would be removed at any sigh of danger. I was to partially fail my first mission, earning Milo a little more respect from his mother. I did not want to be on his bad side. The only problem was the fire. Fire is the natural enemy of water, and therefore my natural enemy. Knowing this, I had still placed myself in a situation where I would have to use it. If I didn't immediately get out of the burning castle, it was unlikely I would survive.

"Hey, watch it, Water Girl! You almost walked into the fire!" I jumped, startled out of my thoughts by Milo's voice. My foot landed in the edge of the fire. I yelped in pain, jumping backwards away from the searing heat and landing in a heap on the ground. The burns healed almost immediately, but my strength was dampened a bit more than I would have thought necessary for a burned foot. I looked at it before it was fully healed, and threw up in my mouth a little bit. I had been barefoot, and the skin was blistered so bad it was nearly seared completely off. The amount of water I subconsciously used to heal it was so great I nearly passed out. Milo looked from my now-fully-healed foot up to my now-pale face.

"That's just unnatural." I tried to glare at him, but I'm not sure it came accross like it was on fire yourself," he laughed out.

"Hou did you know that?" came my reply.

He shrugged and said "It takes a genious to figure it out, but it just so happens that I am a genious."

I snorted at him. "Help me up." He did so and I almost passed out. How am I gonna do this, I thought.

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It finally came. The attack. Milo briefed me on his "better" plan. He would set the castle on fire starting at the top, and all I had to do was hold the doors closed with my "Super-freaky Pulling powers". Honestly, I was a little relieved. My foot still ached dully whenever I thought about fire. I couldn't even imagine how I would have actually made it.

We stopped walking about fifty yards from the castle and began lighting some torches . . . or should I say Milo started lighting the torches. I stood as far back as I could without seeming overly afraid. Ever since the day before, my fear of fire had been renewed. Anyway, we finished with the torches without incident, and got up to move in for what was supposed to be a fairly easy mission. We even had a little pathway that wouldn't be on fire so we could get out easily. What we forgot is that burning buildings have a tenancy to fall on top of whoever is inside. This would almost be Milo's doom, and some could say that it was the beginning of all my difficulties. For you see, this was how I began to trust Milo enough to tell him my brilliant plan of . . . never mind, that happens later. Now I skip ahead to the interesting part.

I stood in the center of the bottom floor, hovering a few inches above the ground as I Pulled on every door to the outside. There were three. The bottom floor of the elves' castle was a perfect circle. The castle itself was tall and skinny . . . for a castle. The elves were rushing all around, trying to reach the doors that wouldn't budge. I was not approached after the first few elves made an attempt. I had learned many spells in my time learning with Sasha. Not all of it was easy, but for me, most of them were. Let's just say about the first few attackers that only half of them laid at my feet. I had sent the others . . . away. I could hear heavy footsteps and screaming in the floors above me. The vile odor of smoke got stronger with each breath, and every now and then, I was reminded of the flames and fear coursed through my veins.

Then he showed up at the bottom of the stairs, two last torches in hand. He threw them over the mobs of elves crowding two of the doors, blocking their paths. I let go of them, and threw up two magical walls on either side of the last remaining door, keeping both elves and the quickly spreading fire at bay. They wouldn't last long. I ran for the exit, Milo right behind me. The fire spread even more rapidly, seeping onto the beams that held up the ceiling through the cracks in the floor above.

The beam fell too easily, almost as if someone had made it fall on purpose at that exact moment. It plummeted toward Milo's head. I panicked. Diving forward, I shoved Milo out of the way. The firey beam fell on me instead. My leg, to be exact. Fire immediately caught onto my trousers. It spread even more rapidly over my clothing than it had spread over the floor.I opened my mouth to scream, but I couldn't hear the inhuman sound that was expelled from my lungs. I was told of it later. I wasn't able to feel anything except the pain. The indescribable pain as every drop of the water I relied on for life was expelled. I passed out from pain, just before I would have seen daylight. Milo had dragged me out of the burning building.

He would have died if I hadn't pushed him. The beam was falling straight toward his head. I would have died if he had not pulled me from the castle into the river. This was the day we began to trust each other, and consequently the day my life changed. Whether it changed for the worse or the better, however, remains to be seen.