FIVE
It had been a long day of walking and talking. Zevi showed Jaela around the school, and Jaela, as promised, did not complain to Zevi about the fact that she hadn't eaten in who-knew-how-long.
The girls were walking back to the dorms to sleep when Jaela suddenly thought of something she wanted to try.
"Hey, Zevi?" Jaela asked. "Have you played Capture the Flag yet?"
"No," Zevi told her, shivering. "And I don't want to try, either. Somebody out there'll snap my neck!"
"Come on," Jaela encouraged. "You just run around near the edge of the woods until seven AM. How hard can that be?"
After several minutes of arguing, Zevi eventually conceded to her demands, and they took the right path at the fork, the one that led to the woods.
Jaela then half-listened while Zevi told her a million and one reasons why it was a very bad idea to play the game.
Instead, she thought about all the strange things that had happened in her first twenty-four hours or so at the school - the disappearing window, the note on her bed, and the impossible staircase. None of it made sense; she was hoping that the Capture the Flag game would help clear her head and let her think about it from a more revealing perspective.
"Yeah, so, I was thinking - what if we put the Flag on top of the Lookout? When we tried the Pit last week, they flooded us. A massacre."
"We tried that on Wednesday. They saw it easy and we lost in half an hour, but people kept killin' each other 'cuz we couldn't find 'em - oh, stragglers."
Jaela stepped into the large clearing first, earning whispers of recognition and many a scrutinizing glance. Zevi stepped into the space behind her.
The clearing was very large, and it looked like it had enough space to fit eight hundred people comfortably. The light in it was fading fast, the sun quickly retiring for the night. About four hundred people stood in the clearing, watching and listening to five people bicker while they were standing on a pile of logs. Jaela assumed they were the leaders.
"Five forty-nine, total," one announced. "Still a really small Saturday."
"Yeah, because everybody got murdered in Wednesday's battle! And it was all our good fighters!" another shouted.
"Let Dylan take care of 'em," the first person sighed. "He'll probably know where to put 'em."
Something stirred in the trees across from Jaela, and every person in the clearing watched as a boy wearing a black trenchcoat walked in. He was a few years older than Jaela, with reddish-brown hair and light purplish-blue eyes.
"I said to put everybody else that comes on attack," he spat, expressing his resentment for the people on the makeshift stand. "We've already got our defense prepped and our backup troops hidden, and the ambush party is already at the top of the Lookout. I'm the Strategist, Captain. Don't waste my time reassigning everyone."
The person who had previously spoken sighed, and Jaela assumed he was the team captain. "Do these two seriously look like attack material to you, Dylan?"
Jaela found herself not liking the leader very much. She stared at him but kept her resentment hidden under an unreadable expression.
Dylan snorted and Jaela thought for a moment that she saw a bulge move beneath the trenchcoat. "The beldam does," he answered.
Jaela shifted her blank gaze to him, although this time the mask hid curiosity. He laughed.
"See, that's creepy enough to make a vampire wet their pants and go screaming for Mommy. She'll be fine," he assured. "What's your name, anyway?" he asked her.
She grinned. "Jaela."
"I like you then, Jaela. You two get ready - we begin the fight at sundown."
"The flag?" one of the leaders asked.
"Is hidden. Somewhere they'll never find it. Defense, come with me."
All the light that came in the forest only shone through in the occasional clearing.
Deep in the woods, however, barely any of the pale moonlight made the full descent, and what little did had lost intensity working its way through the dense trees, as well as any cloud cover that might have been above.
Jaela heard a bush shake and knew Zevi was stuck on something. She turned around to look at her.
Zevi was completely entangled in a bush about ten feet behind her, shivering violently. It looked like she had almost walked into the prickly bush to try to keep warm. Her yellow-green eyes were strangely reflective in the low light.
"T-t-too c-cold for me," she whispered before crying out; whether it was in pain or frustration, Jaela couldn't tell.
Zevi fell face-first into the bush, and her now decidedly agonized screams slowly became lower-pitched and more animal-like. About thirty seconds later, a four-foot tall dark beast walked out of the bush, looking back at Jaela with Zevi's eyes.
They were sad eyes, and they said only one thing:
This is what I am, and I hate it.
The wolf howled a long, slow, mournful howl, and darted off into the forest.
Three more howls broke the stillness of the forest's night, and then all was quiet once again.
Jaela continued silently walking through the woods. Who knew where Zevi was now, but Jaela didn't really care. The werewolf could have been chatting with a small pack on the other side of the forest, wherever that was.
"Bastard!" someone said quietly.
The speaker was close by. Jaela froze.
"Oh, no, I don't need a map!" they continued, the mockery in their tone obvious. The voice sounded vaguely female, but it was hard to tell through the parody it was doing. "I'll just follow the fucking moon and we'll get there in no time!"
"I flew up to see where their camp was, not you!" another voice, this time male, argued. "Not my fault you can't go bat worth shit, Vanessa!"
"Fuck. Off. James," the girl, whose name was apparently Vanessa, answered. "We can't even see the fucking moon anyway!"
"Shut up!" a third voice shouted, another male. "Someone's gonna hear us over here and it's gonna be both of your faults!"
While the three people were arguing, Jaela began to slowly sneak over behind a tree so that she could hide from them; the odds that she would win a three-on-one fight with no weapon were against her, especially if they were all good fighters.
Then a twig snapped beneath her feet, and they heard her. Jaela froze.
"Shh! What was that?" the third voice whispered.
Jaela remained frozen and expressionless, carefully watching the group that was less than ten feet away.
Then someone caught her gaze, and she used that to her advantage. She slowly grinned, and watched their expression change from anxiety to sheer horror.
"HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?"they screamed.
Jaela jumped into action, running underneath and snapping off a thin branch to use as a weapon. She looked at her two remaining opponents, who raised their fists pitifully; the third had run away into the woods, back the way the group had come.
Jaela grinned and gripped the stick as she tried to whack the guy closest to her. He dissolved into a cloud of dark shapes much like flying rats, and the end of the branch passed through the area that had formerly been his head. He slowly melted back into one piece, but she had already begun attacking his partner to achieve the same result.
She ran through the nearby trees, trying to get hits in from behind them, but to no avail; her opponents kept dissolving into clouds of small, dark, furry things, and it suddenly occurred to her that the creatures were bats.
So she came up with another plan, and carried it through. Her attackers got in many hits, however, and she quickly collapsed.
"She was one tough bitch," one said.
"Not that hard. But which way now?" their friend answered.
"I don't know. You sure she's out, though?"
At that moment, Jaela attacked. She hit one of her assailants on his left temple, and he fell unconscious; the other transformed into a cloud of bats that quickly flew away.
She stood up quickly, and ran from the clearing, regaining her course and fleeing the scene.
Jaela ran, and her run slowly became a jog, and her jog slowly became a walk, which eventually slowed to a complete stop.
She rested for a while before deciding to continue on.
Seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes stacked up to hours; she continued her silent walk, almost asleep on her feet.
And then she heard a voice.
"Not very many people reach the edge of this forest, let alone this world."
Jaela was surprised by the voice. It sounded very familiar in far-too-many ways.
She looked up to see a skeletal figure, like a six-legged corpse, staring out into a nearby expanse of nothingness. It was exactly the same nothing as she had seen before in the penthouse.
"I suppose you want an explanation before you start your training with us?" the creature asked, sighing.
Jaela nodded, and the creature turned, finally revealing its face.
In place of eyes, the creature had two large black buttons, partially hidden by round spectacles that were probably only there for effect. Its hair was long, chestnut-brown and greasy, and its lips were shaped into a fine, concerned line. Black cracks ran through a porcelain face, making it look old and scarred.
"I am one of the Groundskeepers. We are all beldams, just like you are, and we keep this place real. You can call me Raevyn."
Raevyn turned her head back to the nothingness beyond them. They both watched it do nothing for a while, standing in silence.
"Your friend, Zevi..." Raevyn finally said, frowning. "She is only one of thousands that we have to protect from the truth. This place... is not what people expect it to be, a real place. It's all fluid, all changing. It doesn't have to be constant... and it doesn't have to exist at all."
Jaela looked from the nothingness to Raevyn and back again.
"Don't tell anyone about this conversation, okay?"
Jaela nodded.
"Good," Raevyn grinned. "The enemy flag, if you're looking for it, is half a mile that way," she pointed with a bony hand.
Raevyn then pulled a silvery dagger out of thin air and handed it to her.
"This could be of use to you," she said distantly. "Don't get lost, now."
Jaela began to walk in the direction Raevyn had pointed, and still felt the beldam's accusing stare long after she was out of sight.
There were eight guards in the clearing with the flag. Jaela recognized a few of them from walking around the school earlier in the day, but most of them were new to her.
No doubt there were a few hundred more in the woods around it, based on what she had seen of her own team's defense earlier, but the path Raevyn had shown her was completely clear; no doubt was in Jaela's conviction that they hadn't expected an attack from behind. The guards were very close to each other on the same side of the clearing, watching the opposite direction from which she would strike.
She stepped into the clearing. The guards, apparently not hearing her, didn't move.
Then again. And again.
Now all she had to do was wrench the flag out of its position where it was staked in the ground.
Her hand squeaked on the metal pole when she tried to pull it out. The guards heard her.
Jaela immediately withdrew the silver blade she had been given and watched as they charged her. She stabbed the closest one in the arm, and they withdrew in pain, covering the wound.
She ducked and the next three that came at her were slashed in their legs, and one of them was unlucky enough to be cut through the bone. Blood gushed all over the clearing as the victims cried out loudly.
One of the last four ran off, screaming something along the lines of "Siege! We're under siege!" while the other three charged Jaela and dodged her slashes, looking for an opening in her defense to throw a punch or hit her with a stick.
She dispatched the first two quickly and easily, but the third eventually pinned her to the ground a few feet from the flag.
"Loser," the boy whispered, grinning.
"Wipe that smile off your face," Jaela grinned.
"Why?" he mockingly grinned.
"You're still smiling."
With her free hand, Jaela pulled the flag's pole from the ground before the boy realized what she was doing.
Dawn broke on the horizon. The game was won.
(A/N): This chapter was really fun to write. All of the events depicted in it take place over a timeframe of a few hours from dusk to dawn on a Saturday night, the same night also falling in line with Jaela's first full day at the school.
Now, I have a few credits to make.
First thing: As you can probably tell, if you're as big a fan as I am, I've stolen a lot of the Capture the Flag stuff from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians universe (I don't want to have to explain the whole thing, but it also overlaps with The Kane Chronicles series and The Lost Hero series by the same author (Rick Riordan); that is a conversation for another day, however). I have a few reasons for that, specifically that they can't have a sporting league if it's the only school for monsters on Earth (er... whatever?...), and that I wanted to make it a game that would be easy for the Groundskeepers to contain, for the reason of the explanation that Raevyn gave Jaela. Zevi, for example, is freaking out over the fact she's a werewolf; if she found out she was actually in another dimension (THE TWILIGHT ZONE), a dimension specifically used for trapping children and eating them alive (well, that's another thing...)?... Yeah.
Second thing: Near the end, with Jaela's last two lines of dialogue? I stole those from the amazingly awesome anime (with Added Alliterative Appeal) Spirited Away. They're said by my favorite character in there, who is epically awesome. They're said right before he actually eats two people alive. Have fun sleeping!
Third thing: Rating has moved to T. Obvious, no?
Fourth thing: This is now my second-longest story! Yay!
I think that's it. Go wild, people.