Black Wings A Cast of Magic

Chapter 1

That morning I woke late, with my stuff strewn everywhere. As my eyes rested on my clock, I realized that it was Monday, a school day, and I slept in. As I stood up, I whipped around, and knocked my lamp of the dresser. That was weird. I thought, that lamp was at least a foot away from my arm, how did I knock it off? Throwing those thoughts away, and quickly pulling on a random outfit, I grabbed my bag and raced against time downstairs.

"Good morning, sweetheart!" my foster mother beamed at me.

"Sorrymrsgottagocan'tbelate!" I mumbled through a bite of apple, and raced out the door. I tried to inconspicuously cross the street. The other kids at my school practically abhorred me, I was a transfer student and got in at the last minute. Of course, my previous life as a homeschooler was pretty laid back, so I can't really complain. A group of boys noticed me about halfway across the street, dang it.

"Hey, it's the shadow girl!" One boy taunted. "Look at her weird eyes!"

Ok, so maybe dark purple eyes weren't exactly the definition of normal, but that was still a low blow.

"Let's put her in the sun and see if she disappears" another sneered, obviously unaware that the others had moved on from my name and were now snickering about the color of my eyes.

Imbeciles.

I guess I should start from the beginning. My name is Nigra, Nigra Sunguan Shadow. Shadow is pretty self-explanatory, but the rest of my name is a bit unusual. So apparently Nigra is Esperanto for black and Sunguan is Korean for winged. That means if you put my name together it means, 'black winged shadow' weird huh? If only I could ask my birth parents about it. They remained shrouded in mystery though, I was left at an orphanage when I was one and adopted the year after. Anyway, by now I noticed that everyone was staring at me. Thoroughly embarrassed, I hurried up the stairs to my school and through the front door, looking at my feet trying to draw as little attention as possible.

Walking in, the announcement board caught my eye, it said that a new boy my age had transferred in. Huh, I wondered if he had been homeschooled as well.

Ack! No more distractions! I was late enough as it was. Whispers about the shadow girl trailed behind me all the way to class. I was almost glad to get to dry history.

"Now, who can tell me who Benedict Arnold was?"

Almost

Slipping in the classroom, I attempted to achieve invisibility.

"Late again, Miss Nigra?" Unfortunately, nothing escaped the shrewd eye of Ms. Lilyum.

"Sorry Ms. Lilyum! I, uh, woke up late!" I said from behind the diagnaly long black bangs that fell over my face and tucked around my ear.

"Then perhaps it's time you got an alarm clock"

Staring at my feet, I shuffled into the room, and opened my dusty old textbook to the chapter on the board.

"Now that Miss Nigra has graced us with her presence, can anybody tell me what influence Benedict Arnold had during the American Revolution?"

"You're ancient enough to have been there, why don't you tell us?" someone muttered, arousing a generous round of snickers from the class. I just sighed, wanting it to be over. After school, I would go to my fencing class, the one thing I did have throughout all of my foster homes, I had been doing it for six years now, and I was top of my class and this one time- "Any ideas, Miss Nigra?"

I quickly snapped out of my revere. "Ummmmmm, what was the question?" I could feel my face going crimson.

"I asked you what you thought the reason could have been behind Benedict's traitorous actions, but obviously something else was more important." Mrs.Lilyum reprimanded. "This is your final warning, if I catch you nodding off one more time, I'll be seeing you in detention"

This was going to be a long hour.

Finally, the bell rang and I was able to get out of that horrid room, and off to a slightly less horrid one. Math. Still torturous, but better than history. Of course, anything was better than that class, so it really isn't saying much. As I trudged to my locker and grabbed my math books, my phone began to ring. It was my foster parent, but she almost never called me during school hours, even passing time. I answered, and in an oddly muffled voice, she told me she planned to pick me up right before lunch.

I wanted to ask why, but before I could, the bell rang. "Sorry Mrs, but I have to get to class". Hanging up, I shoved my phone into the locker and ran to class. Mr.Trysten had just started putting the warmup on the board. Phew! I wasn't late for once. I opened up my math book and started the questions. √81 is, um, 9, 78932 is...25,248. Math was monotonous, but at least I wasn't listening to a boring lecture on the French revolution, or the American revolution, or the Russian revolution, or the Xinhai revolution. Why on earth where there so many revolutions?!

I got to question ten of the warm-up and set down my pencil, that was odd, the warm-up always went up to at least 15. Mr.Trysten was a major stickler about that. Around me kids were whispering, rumors about our teachers newfound insanity spreading like wildfire.

"Erm... Mr.Trysten?" A boy from the back of the room ventured.

"What?" Our teacher practically shouted at him, his voice dripping with disdain, and something else. Worry? The boy, Jordan, I think his name is, realized he had made a mistake. He pressed on anyway, which was either incredibly brave, or incredibly brain dead, most likely the latter.

"Oh, well, uh, I noticed that you only put ten questions on the board, instead of fifteen um so...."

"Well, Jordan, if you like math problems so much, maybe you should stay in during lunch and do fifty more!"

Jordan looked like he wanted to disappear. I felt sorry for him, why was Mr.Trysten so snappish today? He was usually pretty chill.

The room was quiet after that, everyone afraid to provoke the teacher. I was wondering how much longer the sweltering silence would last when there was a knock on the door. I jumped, startled by the sudden noise and our principal strode in. His usually warm brown eyes were cold, and his hand twitched nervously as he announced that the school was on a level four lockdown. Gasps and whispers shattered the fragile silence. He explained nervously that there where unknown and dangerous people stalking around and inside the building as he spoke.

"...you are not to open this door for ANYONE other than me or the police." He finished, and marched out of the room. Time froze. The entire class sat in shock for a whole minute before chaos came raining down. It started when a girl named Annie from the back of the class let out sob, which echoed in the room. Mr. Trysten snapped into action and became very distressed as he tried in vain to calm the class down, he locked the door and pulled the blinds down, frantically telling everyone that it would be fine. The class had now begun freaking out, there were tears and cries as everyone got on there phones to text there parents that they loved them, as they had seen so many times in the cinema. Annie was still sobbing, now grouped with some of her friends. As I took stock of the classroom, I realized some kids were hunched under their desks as if it were an earthquake, others broke down and cried. A girl named Lois comforted her friends Beth and Nora. After a moment their friend Aidan came over and the whole group sat huddled in the corner. Beth was crying silently, shaking with sobs, Nora's eyes were shiny, and filled with worry and fear. Even though I was in the midst of absolute chaos, I couldn't help feeling envious of the friendship they had.

The majority of the class just sat there in shock though. As if they couldn't believe what was happening. The clock ticked, it was past ten, eleven, than it was the time we usually would have had lunch. My foster mother! She was supposed to have picked me up! Well the lockdown sure made that impossible. I hoped she was ok, what if she hadn't known about the danger and come anyway! What if she were hurt? My mind spiraled out of control as it did in emergencies, and I ran to the window cracking the blinds just slightly, searching for her or her car.

As I worried about this, a hissing sound from the back of the room caught my attention and I looked around. There was some sort of blue-grey gas flowing from the corner! I turned around, running to the door trying to open it and run out, but it was locked, I was doomed. The gas slowly snaking towards through a hole in the wall toward me was the last thing I saw before everything went black.