The Elemental Games

Chapter 4: Life Hurts A Lot More Than Death

"God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spoiled," ~ ?

~3rd Person~

The scream pierces the eerie silence the forest provides. Kiara looks around, her eyes filled with worry and fear. Brandi only tenses and runs off in a direction. Kiara follows closely followed by Aaron. The trio runs full speed through the forest, branches waking their faces, arms, and legs, leaving cuts and bruises. Brandi doesn't stop running until she reaches the bottom of a mountain with snow atop it. To their right are the other five, pinned to a rock wall by a group of ten soldiers, aiming their weird weapons at them.

"No!" Brandi yells out, making a foolish mistake as the soldiers look over at the newcomers, a grin appearing on their faces as they rejoiced silently. One aims their weapon at them and shoots. They all duck at the persons poor aim and Kiara surrounds the soldiers with fire. Their screams could be heard from miles away as the fire threatens to burn them to a crisp. Kiara stands up and walks cautiously over to the fire, just barely being able to see the figures inside. She spots one aiming its gun at the fire. The flames slowly get closer to the soldiers, who are huddled together in fear as they can see their lives flashing before their eyes.

The flames go for the weapons, setting them on fire as the soldiers drop them and kick them away, which causes the fire to now focus on them. Kiara bends down and grabs one of the dropped weapons through the fire. She examines it carefully, wanting to know what it does and how. The fire disappears since she is no longer focusing on it, and the soldiers make their escape. Kiara sees this and flicks her fingers and fire burns down the soldiers. Kiara turns around and tosses the object to Brandi, who is staring at the now burnt bodies of the soldiers. Aaron is looking at Kiara in a worried way, which confuses Kiara. She follows Brandi's gaze and gasps when her eyes land on the bodies with smoke rising up into the air from them. She backs away, scared of what she can do now. She goes to turn around and run, but Aaron stops her. She looks into his eyes, scared and angry.

"Kiara!" Aaron says loudly, "you did the right thing!" Kiara looks at him, horrified.

"By killing people!" She whispers softly that only Aaron can hear, "so killing people is the right thing?"

"Only if they are trying to kill you," Aaron says with no emotion. Kiara struggles to get out of his grasp. She wants to run far from here, away from her friends, whom she might hurt. Aaron is much stronger than her physically and she gives up by falling in his arms, her head on his chest as tears escape her eyes. He hugs her close to him, feeling the need to comfort and protect her from the evil people on this island. He remembered the days when he mocked her and made fun of her. He hated doing it, but he felt the need to, as if it will satisfy some sort of need in him. Kiara steps back, hugging herself as she blushed slightly from the display. She looked around at everyone else, hopping they couldn't see the blush. The mysterious weapon lies at Brandi's feet, forgotten. Brandi was looking at Samara, who is staring at her own feet. Alex is watching Kiara, a mysterious look on his face while the others and trying to look at anything but Kiara and Aaron. The silence is overwhelming and no one knows what to say to destroy the awkwardness around them. Kiara sighs and looks at them all once before walking off, still shocked about what she did. Aaron watches her leave and he follows, yelling out her name. Kiara doesn't look back as Aaron chases her.

Suddenly, she stops and Aaron almost runs into her. She doesn't look back at him, just bends down quickly. She reaches back and grabs his shirt, without looking back, and pulls him down as well. He looks over her shoulder and spots what made her stop. A large group of uniformed men and women surrounded a fire, talking happily and making occasional jokes. A few strayed at the edges of the camp, holding the strange weapons and looking around the surrounding forest, alert, as if any form of danger will leap out at them. Aaron could hear Kiara's steadied breathing as he tried to calm his own. How could they not of heard their hurried footsteps as they ran through the forest? Were they that deaf? Aaron soon feels like they stayed too long and knew they would be found soon. He moves his hand slightly and grabs her hand, intertwining his fingers in hers as he begins to pull her slowly away from the camp. She, surprisingly, goes willingly and once they are in the darkness of the forest, they stand up and walk back to the others, hoping they remained where they were. They walked the first two minutes in awkward silence before Kiara spoke.

"They're going to kill us," she says softly, staring ahead, her blue eyes emotionless. Aaron looks over at her, shocked.

"No, we aren't, Kiara," he says softly, "you don't know that-" she turns to look at him, eyes blazing with anger, stress, and curiosity.

"How do you know?" She asks in a loud whisper, "how do you know for certain that we are not going to die here?" Aaron smiles softly and meets her gaze with his calm one.

"Because we have something they could only dream of getting," he says, "we have our powers," he adds on when he notices her confused look.

"Yeah, but Aaron, you saw those men," she argues, "there are a lot of them, probably hundreds. We won't make it off this island alive,"

"Yes," Aaron agrees, "but together, we are strong, alone, we are defenseless," Kiara nods and they continue walking back the direction they came.

~

They see the fire ahead of them and they pick up their pace. They then walk into the small clearing and everyone looks up at them. Brandi's face breaks into a grin as she chuckles softly, Samara looks down, blushing, so does Alex, Jacob, Elliot, and Kiley all giggle silently with wide smiles on their faces. Kiara is confused by this. What about them returning from the depths of the forest is funny? She certainly didn't find anything funny. It was only when Brandi nods in between them that Kiara finally understands. She looks down, as well as Aaron, and they see that they are still holding hands. Kiara's eyes widen in shock and she separates her hand from Aaron's and blushes fiercely. Aaron stands awkwardly, feeling his face heat up as well. Soon, Kiara walks off and sits down next to Brandi and Kiley while Aaron sits beside Alex, who tenses up a bit and doesn't say a word to Aaron. They eight teens all talk silently, occasionally joking and laughing. It was a calm night for them.