Six weeks crawled by. Not much happened in regards to the exercise, if the first day had been any indication.
Personally, a lot was happening to me. Dimitri and I grew distant. We barely saw each other anymore because we were busy attacking students all over the school. I began to see ghosts and spirits of my former friends and fellow guardians who had died at Alexander Dragomir's home. Sleep evaded me. I passed it off as hallucinations from lack of sleep and didn't think of it anymore. And on top of it all, I was trying to avoid running into Adrian again, but he wasn't making that easy.
Rose was having quite a time herself. She was hugely inconsistant. Going from being too eager to jump in, to being not eager enough, to seeing ghosts (which I might add, was not normal for most guardians, but completely normal for a Shadow-Kissed Guardian, not that it was safe or a good thing to be seeing ghosts), to being assigned half-time and then finally kicking no less than three guardians' butts...Dimitri being one of them. And from what I heard, by the end of it, she was sitting on top of him, panting like some animal...and most likely she was thinking things...it wasn't unlikely that Dimitri was thinking of it too.
I stopped caring and thinking too much about it altogether, by this point. It was damaging to my health to care so much. If I were to freak out at every little thing that happened I would have a nervous breakdown, that or I'd destroy everything in my path.
However, the next thing that happened was nothing short of a spectacular shock, in my opinion.
Rose came running, her breath came in ragged gasps. I could smell Dimitri on her, yet, I didn't care, something was wrong I could see it in her eyes. I ran to her, despite our past grievances, she ran towards me too.
"Dimitri, there's–we're being attacked! Strigoi have broken past the wards!" Rose managed, "There are Strigoi on campus!"
Everything had come out scrambled, I panicked a bit, but we had been taught to stay calm until that word was used...Stan heard the commotion and came over.
"Rose, are you sure-" Stan started.
I could see her struggling to think of something.
"Please, don't say it," I prayed, "Please, no."
"Buria. He said to tell you buria," Rose blurted out.
I closed my eyes for a brief second when I was praying, but the minute I heard 'buria' I took off. Everything moved so quickly around Rose and I'm not sure she even knew what was going on, but this was what I lived for. I know it's not a good thing to love to fight, but that's what I grew up on, it was what I always craved for. I knew that one day there would be a Strigoi I knew, but I would have to kill them, as long as it wasn't him I would be alright. I never thought I would soon lose another important person in my life again, but in a Strigoi attack, anything was possible.
Alberta came with orders, splitting the guardians up to defend various places in the school. I could barely concentrate. While we were here talking, Dimitri could be dying, dead, or turned. The other thing that worried me was how the wards had broken in the first place. Unless they had been staked, I had no clue how they were weakened.
Then I realized...Rose had been seeing ghost, so had I. Those weren't dreams. Those were real ghosts. Wards were made to keep out anything and everything dead or undead. We weren't supposed to have seen ghosts. That had been the sign all along that the wards had been failing.
"Guardian Sterling, to the front lines, now," ordered Alberta.
I didn't need her to tell me twice, I flew off to join Dimitri. I had to know if he was alright, for now, he was all I had, the last person I could trust. He was fighting hard on the front lines and appeared grateful to have some help at last. I was accustomed to using two stakes, so one felt like a bit of handicap to me. My stakes in particular had been modified to function like tonfa, extensions of my body, with one, it made me feel like a crazy butcher murderer...I hadn't been able to find them in my haste to join Dimitri on the front lines.
"Where's your stakes, Mira?" called Dimitri.
"Clearly not with me," I called back, "I'm not sure where they went. I thought I had packed them..."
"I'm glad I packed an extra for you," grinned Dimitri, reaching into his duster and tossing them to me.
