CORRUPTED FILE [Lumina Chronicles Past Drafts]

Level Thirty-Eight

[ELLE's PoV]

Where were we? Oh, right. Explosion, maybe-not-but-totally-possible time travel conundrum, exit stage right pursued by like twenty armored knights. Cool.

Once a villager singled Marc out in the crowd as being suspiciously hooded, suspiciously non-human, and suspiciously identical to one of the guys who just blew up the king, there was nothing we could do but run. Or, fly.

"Hold on tight!" Marc shouted as he grabbed me around the waist and materialized those big black wings. "This is gonna be rough."

And then we ran, and did an awkward little jump thing, and then suddenly we were in the air. With an especially uncool yelp-slash-squeal hissing through my lips like an overheated tea kettle, I clung to Marc with everything I had. Not my finest moment, but this did seem like a pretty life or death situation, and those probably get awkwardness passes. Or they should, anyway.

It was weird, flying. Like everyone imagines it or dreams about it or whatever, but actually flying was like... not even something I could really describe. It was especially weird that it was Marc.

Marc, who literally screamed the first time he saw a plane fly overhead, who was afraid to ride inside a car, who referred to bikes as "skeletal wheel-horses" which was... a whole other thing to unpack. Marc— who, despite being iffy about modern transportation, otherwise seemed right at home on earth with video games, sunglasses, microwaves, leather jackets, and skinny jeans— was flying with wings attached to his body like a god damn pigeon.

It was just plain weird. There was no other way to describe it, and its not like I really had the time to think about it with an armored death-squadron pursuing us.

We made it over the wall pretty quickly, and I thought for a moment that maybe we could go on like this all the way to Lumina. And I was about to ask Marc why he didn't just think of flying from the very beginning. Then the shooting started.

The first volley of arrows whizzed past us, but an arrow from the second caught Marc right in the wing— I knew because I felt his scream, and the warm splatter of blood, and the rush of air as we plummeted.

We hit a tree first, knocking the wind out of me and tearing feathers from Marc's wings with a sickening snap. The tree saved us from what would have been a killing (or at the very least bone-shattering) fall, but it still hurt. I was surprised to be conscious when we hit the ground. Marc was out cold, though.

This was it, then. The knights were upon us and we'd probably be dead any second. I pulled Marc against me, ignoring the way blood slicked my hands as I wrapped myself protectively around him. He was still breathing, he would be okay. I had to tell myself that or I would lose it. With one hand I fumbled for the pepper spray in my bag.

"Stay away from us! I mean it!" The knights approached us from all sides, and I whipped my dizzy head around to glare them each down individually. Even with the pepper spray canister aimed menacingly, they didn't stop coming. Of course not, they had no clue what pepper spray was. And why should they? I was in some god awful fantasy nightmare world. They probably didn't even know what germs were.

I sprayed the first knight that got close enough. Right through the visor of their helmet. They screamed and stumbled back, throwing their helmet off and grabbing at their eyes.

"Careful with that one, she's got a potion!" One of the other knights shouted.

Oh please.

But there were too many of them, and I couldn't run because Marc was injured in my lap, and they all had swords, and soon enough they were grabbing us. Someone pulled the pepper spray out of my hand and twisted my arm roughly behind my back while someone else yanked me to my feet.