Vital - Book 1 (On hold: to be rewritten)

4. Triangulis Go To School?

The hallway inside the school wasn't grey limonium, with walls lined with lockers and long corridors with the plain wooden doors. The entrance wasn't strewn with pathetic displays of past awards that the school had won. The school wasn’t anything Wren had imagined could fit inside a school.

The school atrium was a triangular shaped, with corridors leading off in three different directions. The marble floor was engraved with a huge triangle, split into three parts-the top right section with an open eye, the top left; a closed book, and the bottom, a flame. Above each corridor was a carving of either the flame, the book or the eye. People were milling around, each heading towards their separate corridors. Hale headed for the 'flame' one, which was heaving with people, shouting and laughing and brandishing weapons. Hale shouldered his way through the crowd, arriving at a group of boys and girls of mixed ages. A boy was showing off a knife, which he held in the centre of the circle. Wren was shocked to see a girl who couldn't be older than nine, getting so close to the shining metal that her nose was nearly touching it, eyes wide. 

“Hale!” A girl, tall and thin with dark brown hair and large brown eyes threw herself at Hale, wrapping her arms around his neck. Hale stood stiffly in her embrace. 

“Hey, Avril.” Wren stifled a laugh when she heard the thoughts racing through Avril’s head.

A thin boy, who must’ve been related to Avril due to his dark brown hair and eyes and pale skin, pulled her back by her t-shirt. Asa was his name. He’d been showing the knife. Wren was enjoying the surge of power that she seemed to have accumulated throughout the night. She could suddenly see and hear everything. 

Avril and Asa Dumorne, the Heater twins. It was fun to be able to get inside everyone’s head.

A loud, shrill bell sounded in the corridor and the crowd began to flood through the doors that lined the corridor, chatting and laughing. 

“See you, Edie.” Asa waved to the little girl who had been admiring his knife. Her green eyes flashed dangerously as she stuck out her tongue at him. Her long, light brown plaits bounced as she darted through the crowd, disappearing into a door a little way down the corridor. 

Wren had expected a usual classroom, like the ones in her old school, back in London. Instead, the room before her was arranged like one of those Roman amphitheatres she’d studied in Classics, with circular rows of benches spiralling down to a platform in the centre of the room. Sets of stone stairs were carved in intervals around the circle, leading down to a raised wooden platform. The walls were lined with diagrams of weapons and battle manoeuvres, with tall archer style windows. Rope ladders and punch bags hung from the rafters.

“Serena Shadow?” A tall, thin man who stood on the centre platform stepped off it and made his way through the crowd of people taking their seats, arriving at Wren. Probably an Oxygenator thought Wren. How else would he know her name?

“It’s a pleasure to meet such a…talented young person. The first  member of the Shadow family that isn't a Darkling I’ve seen for quite some time. Dominant Ability?” 

“Heater.” She didn’t know for sure, but it felt right. The man sifted through the stack of papers he was holding, before handing a sheet to Wren. “My name’s Dennis Clidor, and you’ll call me Sir. I’m head of the sixteens-and-overs in the Heater world, and I’ll be teaching you Ability History. Good luck, Wren.” He retreated back to his platform, where he proceeded to call names out in a register. Wren sat down next to Hale and scanned the timetable. Three hours of Ability Training. Then lunch, then English for an hour, then Maths for another, then Ability History followed by one last hour of Training. At least she had Hale with her to point things out.