I'm not going to lie and say that I wasn't disappointed at the amount of feedbacks I had from my story. So far, I only had eleven or twelve cheering me up every time I update. But hey, as our own Rose Hathaway quotes: "It's probably some kind of karmic way to balance out the universe. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair to have one person so full of awesomeness."

LOL =) The usual disclaimer applies, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Chapter Ten

1010T hours

10:10 AM, Montana Mountain, Mountain Daylight

Class: The Dread

The class name just all but took me on the brink of sanity. And by sanity, I meant my natural common sense to laugh at such a ridiculous title.

Ridiculous title aside, I was looking forward for the class. I had a strange feeling that nothing could go wrong now that I had passed the "test" Tasha had given me. Believing to that I had the capabilities to do what it takes was one thing I was a little good at, since I had an ego that could fill a crater on the moon, and a pride that could be rivaled to my brother's. All in all, a good dose of ego isn't that bad when you're in the Academy. In fact, it was a necessity. But then, pride was one of the seven deadly sins…but should I repent?

I didn't know the answer.

I ran up to the room, which was way up the building mostly made out of glass. It was creepy every time I looked out. I was three stories up and there was no denying the truth that I was afraid of heights. I cringed and looked away, focusing on looking what was in front of me. When I was at the hallway to my designated room, the first thing I saw had my hackles rising.

A lich stood at a black double door, looking everything like a soldier on watch. Except that the soldier was more or less a zombie. Its skin was all brown, grey, and dirty and crinkled up. Its eye sockets black empty holes on his ugly soulless face. His dead mouth regarded me in a silent snarl.

Even though liches were similarly ugly, this lich, I knew. He had threatened to chop my head off, after all.

"Gordon, good day." I said, mustering up a small smile even though I wanted so badly to grimace at the scent he was giving out. Liches, I confess from experience, smelled like decaying bodies, as they should smell.

The lich remained silent, but it was a mocking kind of silence, the kind that just made you want to pull your hair out of their follicles from the annoyance of it.

"Where's your master? Aren't you supposed to be tied up today back at his temple?" I asked, mocking too. If he was just going to stand there until I go mad, I might as well get a little fun out of it.

Its mouth moved, and before I knew it, black smoke—the kind of smoke that moves slowly and seductively in the air with a deadly purpose—moved toward me, its scent growing more putrid by the second. And it seemed like the hallway was too small. The air too thin like the walls were pressing in on me. The smoke came nearer, its movements as graceful and slow as a snake's slither.

And then, I remembered Father's most inspirational message he had given to me: "If you have the courage, determination and the absolute belief in your capabilities to take on the world, everything is possible."

That had been one of the longest speeches I have heard Father say to me, and the most inspirational. I took strength in that, and so did my brother, Yilmaz. But Yilmaz was far too arrogant and dominating to draw in limits when it comes to "making things possible." He always thought Father's words were God's words—always took Father's "quotes" too personally. I would rather he took Father's orders on a mission seriously so we wouldn't screw up royally. Instead, he took it the other way around, ending things up with a big messy bang that left me to clean it all up.

But anyway…back to the present…

The black smoked snaked around my body, but I didn't pay attention to it. I put my whole undivided attention to the lich in front of me and I smiled. The grin, promising many unsaid threats to the recipient, grew wide when the lich's surprise showed on its face. If he was going to "kill" me in his own undead way, I might as well die fighting—or not die, but actually win. That idea would be so great if I only knew how to kill an already dead thing.

Just the way the black smoke stopped around my body and began retreating was a dead giveaway of his awareness of my reaction.

Before I could stop the lich myself from doing that smoke thingy, it had already withdrawn the smoke back, while saying in its raspy voice, "I am not supposed to hurt you. My Lord has ordered me not to. You were the lady who busted my neck again, but those actions can be forgiven, so long as you shall stay true to your word not to destroy the peace my Lord, and the Temple has found."

I was a little stupefied at Gordon's words, but I swallowed back a question that teetered on the edge of being asked. I gave him my smug smile instead. "Your…Lord certainly told you not to kill me." I said a little amiably, but there was still an edge to my tone.

Gordon looked like he was not interested in answering me, but he did. "Yes, my Lord has told me not to harm you pitiful mortals."

I snorted at the implication. "Mortals? And…pitiful? I'm sorry, but I may be a lot of things, but I am not pitiful." I said the word like it was AIDS.

Gordon's wrinkled face stayed blank, guarded. "Do you deny that you are not a mortal also?" Now that Gordon wasn't saying any threats, I found a very faint, almost unidentifiable, hint of an accent he had. It was Southern, but I couldn't put a finger from what particular place.

I almost laughed at that. "Me? Mortal? Hell, yeah! What are you saying? You're immortal?"

"I am neither mortal nor immortal, lady. I am undead, which puts me in between life and death. I cannot die of any disease or any physical lacerations—I am ageless. But I can die if my Lord or the Great Lord Hades chooses so."

Interest bloomed inside me. I wanted to know more about liches and other things about Vessels, but I had a class to go in to.

I pursed my lips and shoved my hands inside the pockets of my jeans. "Well, it was nice talking to you, Gordon, but I have a class waiting for me. The Dread. Can you show me the way to the class?"

A smug, toothless smile was plastered on the lich's face. "I am The Dread. And you have just passed the first test."

I raised a speculative brow. "But I didn't do anything." I told it.

Gordon's smile disappeared. "But you reacted the right way a warrior should. Godspeed, lady."

With that, Gordon opened the huge black double doors he was guarding and shoved me inside.

It felt like forever before I gained a little awareness of where I was standing.

It looked like I was in the movie set in Land of the Dead 2007 version (the latest version sucked ass). The whole place had turned like its own personal hell. There were buildings—yes, buildings—burning even though I knew that I was inside a building too. But then, it could all be just holographic images. There were tons of liches and a few young people fighting. The smell of the place was as putrid as a whole cemetery of decaying bodies.

I choked back a gag and looked around the place. It was dark, the only source of light were the broken streetlamps on the pretend street and the fire that swallowed up buildings and trees.

There were groans from the liches and shouts of exultations from the youngsters fighting off the zombies that were chasing them with a speed I didn't know they had. One kid, a tall skinny one with a red bandana across his forehead, headbutted one lich and elbowed one at his side. He had two companions, one a guy just as tall as he with striking dark skin and dark hair was clearly handsome and had a lot of battle skills on his sleeve, and one girl with a skinny almost bony physique with dark skin and dark hair. The handsome one had a saber sword with him and was openly fighting two on one with the liches. The short, skinny girl with the same dark skin as the boy had dark hair that was shaded with more orange and light brown than black looked as catty as Catwoman herself. The girl looked fit to fight despite her bony body.

The liches, facing the battalion of three, didn't back away, but more swarmed in on them, but not enough to overwhelm the fearsome threesome.

The skinny girl was a puncher, and it made sense, since she had fingerless gloves on with metal knuckles. She threw punches like she was born to do it and kicked out her leg to deflect one undead arm reaching out to her. The handsome one showed off a set of impressive moves with his saber, decapitating and amputating a number of zombies. Those moves didn't really stop the liches from attacking though. It only slowed them down, having their heads and hands cut off wasn't an easy thing to ignore—even for the undead. Red Bandana fought them off with pure physical strength. He wasn't muscular, but I could clearly see that he had speed and agility—maybe a little too much of them, but hey, he's an Academist, I shouldn't be too surprised. The trio made a good group.

As I stood watching them, I didn't see the liches that were marching toward me with determined speed. There were at least six, and most of them carried weapons. Uh-oh.

Before the liches could attack me, I charged, attacking them first. I had to be in control, I had to attack first, were the thoughts that kept me running as I threw three star daggers toward the three of the liches who had no weapons. I took off on my place and took the liches by surprise. I landed in a thud in front of them and started taking away their weapons from their surprised grips.

I used their own weapons against them. I batted two liches on the head so hard, their heads came toppling off. I struck about two or three on their legs, and they fell to the dirty street ground. The place looked like a broken and burning version of Las Vegas.

I let my adrenaline and warrior instincts drive me until all of the liches were on the ground, groaning and trying to stand up. If I wasn't so stunned at what had just happened, I would have made a small victory dance. I retrieved my star daggers, and before I could look up, I could hear more groans. I looked around and there were at least two dozen zombies closing in on me.

Holy cow, I thought and looked around for a weapon. My daggers were no use now, and the golf club the lich was carrying was clearly bought cheap because it was now as rotten as the liches.

Finally, a thought struck me. What if I use my powers?

My initial answer was hell, yes, but I thought better, knowing that I would definitely keel over anytime I stop using the powers.

And then, my brilliance didn't fail me. I called at the fearsome threesome with the loudest "HELP!" I could manage. And then, just like that, they were there, battling against the swarm of liches that were circling me. Handsome chopped off heads, and Skinny punched heads until they came off. Red Bandana threw kicks and punches in a blur. I fought some myself, using my bare hands. Something stung when I was done punching two lich heads off but I didn't care. I round-kicked a lich and it went backing away.

I thought that that move would drive them away, but more of them came at me, looking at me with their empty eyes as if I was the biggest threat they had had since their awakening.

But just as I was preparing to battle them off again, a very low sound sounded out of nowhere. The pitch was so low it was barely noticeable, but it had a resonance that chilled my skin and raised goose-bumps all over my body. The lcihes stopped dead (haha, get it—dead? Okay, not funny—moving on) on their tracks. The groans stopped and all of them looked at…somewhere. I looked too, and what I saw had my eyes going wide.

I heard a faint "Oh, my God," from the skinny girl with deadly punches. The fearsome threesome was quiet and they stood still in a battle stance as if they were expecting more attacks. But from what I'm, seeing now, it was possible that more attacks would be sent.

On the top of a mountain of debris, dirt, sand, and about everything else, a man—no, not a man, but a lich was there, riding a black horse that huffed fire out of its nose. The lich didn't look like a normal one, unlike the ones battling us just a while ago. This one looked very, very powerful. It was wearing some kind of flowing tunic and a dark turban that covered its head. It eyes were pure glowing globes of cobalt blue that just screamed POWER at me.

Its glowing eyes landed on me for a second, and the its dead mouth started to move.

It was talking in a loud, low-pitched guttural language that I didn't understand, but all the liches seemed like they did. They groaned again, and to my damnedest surprise, they started walking off.

Why does everyone keep walking away from me? Do I stink or something?

Seconds later, the place was free of liches and I was alone with the fearsome threesome. I looked at them from their places. They looked young, but the looks on their eyes told me that they had witnessed and joined many battles like this. I mourned at how the young were in this generation. Most of them were thrown to the wolves lest of political discrimination. The lucky ones, like me, had to endure the danger too, but not as much. But I didn't like the thought of cowering behind men in times like this—I wanted to go to battle, I wanted to get my own respect and not only from my family name. I wanted Hathaway respect, not Mazur.

The girl looked at me and her eyes gleamed with something like familiarity. "Hey, you're Hathaway,"

I cleared my throat. "Yeah…"

Red Bandana said something in a language I couldn't understand. What was up with the multi-lingual Academists?

Well, I thought, Academists were geniuses.

Skinny gave Red Bandana a chiding look before turning to look at Handsome. His face was solemn, but as soon as he saw Skinny looking at him, his expression changed into annoyance and what looked almost comically like utter dislike.

"What do you want?" he said under his breath, but it was not low enough. His voice was so deep it was almost a growl.

"Our quest." Skinny pointed an orange-tipped finger toward my direction. "Thou shalt find damsel and bring her to thy temple."

That irked me up. "Damsel?"

The two ignored me. "How can you be so sure?"

I shot Red Bandana a look. He shrugged at me and turned to look at the two. I didn't know why but there seemed something missing on Red Bandana's face, I just didn't know what.

"Can you see any girl who needs help around here?" Skinny snapped back.

"Yes, I do. And that's you. You need help from the mental institution."

"Oh, you're impossible!"

"My thoughts exactly, darling." said Handsome.

"Ugh, I hate you." The girl grumbled.

"And I you."

The girl growled and turned her head back from him and gave Red Bandana a look.

The tall skinny guy with olive skin had only one eye—yes, that was it. His eyes—or rather, eye was almond-shaped from Chinese descent. He had spiky black hair and an attitude that he didn't hide. An attitude that I have witnessed from people I was dealing with all my life.

"You're a mafia," I said suddenly.

The guy gave me a startled look. "I'm not," he said.

"Yes, you are." I insisted.

"No, I'm not. I'm a gangster—Bloodz. Or rather, was."

"Same thing,"

Red Bandana chose that time to ignore me and say something to the girl. She looked indecisive for a moment, and then gave in to what she was indecisive about.

"Hathaway," she said in an authorative tone. "You need to come with us." With that, they turned their backs on me in unison, assuming I'd cooperate with them. I wasn't that easy though.

"Hey," I called. They stopped and turned their heads toward me. "Aren't introductions necessary?" I asked.

The girl sighed and they whirled around, still in unison. "I'm Ara Arbolado," the girl said. She pointed and Red Bandana. "This is Jericho Ng," She pointed at the handsome one. "and this is—"

"Fredmar," the guy said, crossing his arms across his chest, looking bored.

"Douche bag," Ara said at the same time.

"I heard that."

They bickered like that on and on until we were at a very nice, but very broken casino. It had a big flickering sign saying "The Witching Hour."

The place looked as normal as it could be in The Dread. The casino still had all its lights on in spite of the visible damage implicated. Something in my gut twisted, telling me that something was very wrong. But then again, everything was wrong right now, so I chose to ignore the feeling. By the time we stepped on the parking lot, I heard horse hooves hitting the cement, and then in a flash, we were surrounded by four liches with those weird glowing eyes and fire-breathing horses.

Curses were spat by Ara, Jericho and Fredmar. They looked ready to fight, but they looked more fascinated than scared. The demons had the same effect on me, but at least I had enough control on my facial features to hide them. I automatically crouched to my battle stance and prepared to fight.

Each lich was unique in their own undead way. One had a flaming red turban, one had a brilliant green tunic, another had a cover across its mouth, and the last one was the same lich we saw just a while ago. But despite of all their differences, they all had the same glowing blue globes for eyes.

Badass Liches, I called them.

"What are they?" I asked Ara.

She didn't take her eyes off the lich with a red turban. "The Dread. I never thought I'd see the day. The Dreads are the deadliest among all Academy creatures. They're said to be the God of the Underworld's personal guards—the Vessel's good friends, too."

I chewed on that for a moment. "I thought Gordon was The Dread."

"What?" Ara risked a look back at me. "Who's Gordon?"

"You know, the lich guarding the door with a breath so bad it had its own color."

"Oh. That was the Vessel's personal bodyguard. A former Civil War general, I heard."

That made sense with its accent. "But I thought The Dread was only one," I said, sounding confused.

"There are many, Hathaway. Now, put your head in the game." she snapped, and I did what she said.

By a coincidence or whatever joke God pulled me into, I was staring into the eyes of the lich that had the bone horn—the one who retrieved the liches from our battle.

I gave it my deadliest glare.

Its eyes narrowed at me, and then it spoke.

"You are hereby summoned to the Temple of Unforgiving Doom. Be prepared for the wrath of thy Vessel of the Underworld." it said, his guttural voice rife with satisfaction.

And just like that, I was shoved in another dimension of wherever the hell I was. Again.

Come on, press the review button and type something for me. You know you want to… I'll update sooner if you'll review… ;-)

xOxO,

K8