Edward and The Peculiar Discovery of the Three Rings

Edward 20

I launched myself at the nearest dragon, and knocked him down. He launched a fireball straight into my face, making me loosen my grip on him. Aware of the opportunity, the pinned dragon kicked up, knocking me away from him. I briefly looked around expecting to find Millie either by my side or really close. But she was neither. I looked over to where I had last seen her and, to my dismay, found her in the arms of the fiery creature from my dreams. She was limp in his arms, like he had knocked her out or even worse, killed her. Filled with a rage that I had never seen before, I slashed out at the dragon in front of me, and tore out it's throat. Launching myself forward, I rambled towards the fiery creature, determined to get to it before it could get away with my best friend. I roared and sent a ball of fire into the air. As I was about to get to Millie, Jack materialized in front of me, stopping me in my tracks.

"Nuh uh uh," said Jack, wagging his finger at me. "I can't have you get to her before the game has barely even started. I need you to participate in something very special that I have planned for you."

"Get out of my way," I growled, speaking mentally to him. "Don't you dare stand in between Millie and me."

"Get out of my way,"  he said mockingly. "How sweet. Don't worry lover boy, you'll see her soon enough, maybe."

In a fit of rage, I slashed at him with my deadly claws, but somehow he didn't receive any  damage at all, for as I slashed him, his form shimmered like he wasn't even there.

"Did you really think that I would endanger myself by actually coming out here?" He giggled. "Oh dear, you must be more stupid than I thought you were. You can't hurt me lover boy, so don't even try."

"Oh I will," I seethed, "don't you worry about that. And one more thing. Making fun of me was just about the biggest mistake you could have made."

I breathed in deeply, and enveloped Jack with a torrent of searing flames, which managed to make some of the nearby guards catch on fire. As I stopped, the hologram of Jack disappeared and, to my frustration, so had Millie. While Jack had been distracting me, he had given the flaming creature enough time to escape with Millie. I knew it had been a distraction from the start, but I hadn't known that I was talking to a hologram of Jack, not Jack himself. If I had known, I would have gained a few precious seconds with which I could have saved Millie.

Cursing myself internally, I scanned the immediate area for danger, and found a few guards standing a few feet away from me, skittishly watching me. After a whole two seconds of thought,  I incinerated them all, making the rest run away in fear.

"Oh Edward, was that really necessary?" sighed Orion, walking up to me. "Did you absolutely have to incinerate the poor guards?"

I faced him and growled, my teeth flashing in the artificial light. I wasn't in the mood for joking at all, given that my best friend had just been kidnapped. After scanning around to see if any danger was still lurking around, I turned back into my human form, and glared at him.

"Of course I did," I said coldly. "Did you not just see the creature with Kiko's sword run off with Millie?"

"Yes I did," he said. "But I didn't think that that justified the deaths of those three or so guards."

He's right, I realized. I'm a monster, just killing those men without knowing anything about them or their families.

"I....I'm sorry," I muttered, realizing the full extent of what I had done. "I shouldn't have lost my control like that."

"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to," he said, and pointed to the piles of smoldering dust, which had not long ago been guards, "you should be apologizing to them, but I'm afraid that there's not much left of them to apologize to."