Wings of the Shadows

Chapter Nine

     Two days later, I'm standing human in the bathroom, staring at my stomach in puzzlement. Pale white claw scars cross my stomach horizontally and I trace them absent mindedly. "C'mon Shadow we gotta see them!" Mark yells from the other room. I sigh, walking out in my sports bra and a pair of black leggings.

     The guys stare at my stomach in shock and anger, not at me, but at Mia. Xene stands up, shifts, flies away without saying a word. Tears fill my eyes, and I blink them away quickly, hoping nobody noticed. If they noticed, they didn't say anything about it. "It looks like it healed perfectly," Brett said.

     "I guess," I said and grabbed a tank top, throwing it on over my bra. 

     "What class do we have?" I say. 

     Sam pulls out his schedule and says, "Channeling?" 

     "Ummm, what is that?" Mark says. Sam shrugs. 

     Malachi says, "Well, it's in the," he checks the schedule, "dungeon." 

     "Oh, that's just fantastic." Malachi says sarcastically. 

     "Why does the school even have a dungeon?" I ask in confusion. The guys just shrug and we walk into the hallway. The other kids know well enough now to be careful not to get squished so we don't have to worry as much anymore. We walk around until we see a large door labeled, 'DUNGEON.' We shrug at each other and walk inside the door, walk down a super long flight of stairs and reach a simple human sized door. We shift and walk inside. 

     The "dungeon" is actually just a super big basement and so we shift back to dragons, being the most comfortable for us now. We sit down in a circle near the front of the room, where two large desks and chair sit, with no teacher in sight. The air tasted earthy and dusty, so being the genius dragon I am, I sneezed. The guys laughed at me, as I'm sure it must've been an amusing sight, and I laughed too, imagining what it must've looked like. A teacher in sweatpants and a sweatshirt walks in and the whole room goes silent as they walk up to the desk and stand behind it. 

     He begins, his tone sharp and serious, "I do not have the patience to deal with stupidity or morons. I am here to teach you how to channel your power correctly, so you don't blow up yourself or this school." I stare, this guy is scary. "Now, I need a volunteer." He scans the crowd and his eyes land on me. "You," he said pointing at me.

      I stand and walk over to him. "The first thing you need to figure before you even start to channel is to figure out what you are." He bends down and grabs the bottom of my wing, stretching it out. I growl in the bottom of my throat, but don't attack. 

     "As you can clearly see, she is a dragon, but it's the type and breed is what really matters." He examines my wing for a second before letting it go. I snap it back to my side, annoyed that the man had been touching my wing without asking. "She is a Umbra Mors Eumenes. She will grow to an astounding height and will extremely agile and fast, both in air and ground. Her scales are practically impenetrable, fireproof, and serve as good camouflage during the night." The room is silent as he says to me, "Light my desk on fire, please?" 

     "Ummm, what?" I link to him with confusion.

     He sighs in exasperation. "I won't say it again. Light my desk ," he points at it, "on fire." I shrug and breathe a steady stream of fire at the desk, the purple tinged black flames, lighting fire to the wooden desk easily.

     He walks over to the desk and stands by the flames. "The flames of a Umbra Mors Eumenes are extremely hot and can melt through any material in the world." As if to prove his point, the desk had already turned to ash, and the fire was dying out, easily melting the stones on the floor of the basement. He turned to me and said, "Thank you for helping me. If you could stay up here for one more demonstration. Now, what your going to help me with is," he reaches behind the other desk and produces a staff topped with a large black crystal egg thing with black red veins running through it. It almost seems to glow with power and he continued, "we are going to try and figure out what your elements are." I nod nervously as he grips the staff with both hands, the egg thrumming with power. 

     He begins chanting, "Et spiritibus mortis exitium, venit ad me. Cum draco me in virtute et gratia eius in hanc viam et dolor contritionis levabunt. Veni ad me, et dabo illi potestatem spirituum et mortis exitium. Fac voluntatem eius radicem suam. Join me spirituum et tenebrae quod iubes!" 

     A dark maroon tendril grew from the egg and I stared in shock. What is that thing? It seemed to turn to look at me and reared like snake, striking down at me. I screeched in alarm as it cocooned me, binding my wings. It pulsed like a heartbeat and it unwound without any warning. I, not thinking, began to take in a deep breath, preparing to blow fire, until Brett jumped in between the teacher and I, where the tendril was hovering. I stopped quickly, nearly choking on the fire that had started coming out. Brett walked back to the guys and sat, nonchalant about what had happened. 

     The teacher said, "Umbra is a chaos, death, fire, and shadow dragon. Not too surprising if you look at her scales and claws. Now, she can draw power of death, chaos, shadows, and fire from around her, but as you can see there aren't many things she can draw power from. I can transfer power to her through direct contact such as this." He stepped towards me and said. "Please lower your head." 

     I held back a growl and lowered my head slightly above the ground. "With dragons like Umbra, it's best to focus on bad memories and emotions." He placed his hands between my eyes and said to the students, "Imagine all that darkness, anger, and chaos flowing from yourself into her." 

     A jolt of power surged through me and I stood stock still. He shut off the stream of power and stepped away. I heard an intake of breath from the class as I stood. Was I taller? I looked down at the ground and it did seem like I was taller. 

     "As you can see, the energy accelerated her growth and she grew to about a fourth of her full size." A fourth!? How big was I going to be?! I felt a darkness that seemed to be hovering around me and I shivered with the power of it. 

     A newfound strength seemed to be coursing through my limbs, strengthening me and seemed to whisper, "You are better than them. Why listen to them when you are stronger? You could be so much more. Just give in." 

     My mind whirled with confusion, fear, possibilities, agreement, disagreement, when the darkness seemed to enter my soul, possessing it. My pupils expanded, covering my whole eye, and I snarled ferally at the students. They screamed and scrambled backwards. The spirit possessing me screeched and flew towards the oak door. I quickly shift, escape through the door, and shift again, running up the stairs. 

      My body flies through the corridor, destroying the furniture, windows and the tapestries that hung along the walls. Inside my mind, I try to regain control of my body, and to get rid of the darkness controlling me but I couldn't. It was too strong.

     I heard the roars of the guys behind me and the spirit hisses in anger and annoyance. Breaking a window, I flew outside. A bolt of lightening hits me, and I fell out of the sky, roaring in pain. I heard feet pounding as people and dragons ran over to me.  I snarled as Brett pinned me down with my feet stuck beneath me. 

      Several people held down my tail as I tried to lash it in the air, to try and get them off. A muzzle is quickly fitted over my snout and my wings and chained to my sides. My paws are chained together and my tail was weighed down with heavy lead balls. A heavy collar was place around my neck with a chain attached to it. 

     My head sunk low with the weight of the collar and Xene took hold of chain in his mouth leading me inside the school. The spirit of chaos writhes in anger in my soul, slowly shredding it. Xene led me the gym, where the teacher was standing with the staff and the other warlocks. The circle around me and Xene leaves the center. I see Jake and his face is angry and betrayed. My heart breaks when I see his face and the spirit howls with anger.

     The warlocks begin to chant, "Rupere foedus impius ab hoc daemonum misera! Et tamen non est dignus te. Ad primum ei, et conversus ad illam animae partem!" With a primal scream of rage and pain, the spirit left me, and I fainted.