Chapter 19

Adelina sat in the front desk, working on the exam that was in front of her. It was easy, strangely, as it was algebra and that remained one of the hardest subjects that she had trouble with. She flew through the exam, her eyes alight as she stood and was the first one to turn in her exam. However, when the young girl placed the paper on the professor's desk, he glanced up from what he was working one with a terrified expression on his face.

Adelina didn't know what was going on until the man started to scream, "NO! DEMON! DEMON!"

"Mr. Kellsor?" She asked. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she reached out for him, only to draw back when she saw her hands had gone from the soft pink of her disguise to the dark violet claws that her normal form held. Adelina's head swiveled towards her classmates, all of them cowering in fear. Fear coursed through her as they started to shout, some begging for mercy, others crying out that they would kill her. She dashed out the door of the classroom as the room started to dissolve to ash.

The hallways of the school were no different than the classroom.

Wherever she went, no matter which corner she turned, there were students crying out at her appearance before disappearing into ash as she passed them. Her clawed feet clattered gently on the floors linoleum before it fell to ash, darkness beginning to surround her. Tears slid down her face as she attempted to turn a corner, only to slid and miss the corner. Adelina fell to the floor, but tried to scramble to her feet almost immediately. However, those three seconds were all it took for the darkness to overtake her.

She fell through the dissolving floor.

Adelina attempted to flap her wings, to gain some air before slamming on the ground that lay somewhere below her, but the appendages were useless. There was no air to support her, it was as if the place she was in was in a vacuum seal.

She hit the ground with a loud thud, the impact enough to drive out the air in her body and leave it in tremendous pain.

The sounds of the terrified students echoed in her ears as she laid there, struggling through the pain and gasping for air. After what seemed to be an eternity, she finally sat up, stiffly as her head spun. Her wing ached, throbbing and when she glanced back, almost vomited when she saw the twisted and shattered way it looked. Even after all she had been through, she never had such an injury to her wing before.

Adelina…

The girl froze.

There was nothing around her but a suffocating darkness. But the voice that echoed through the darkness, it sounded….so familiar. It made her heart ache for some reason.

Adelina…why did you fail me?

The words echoed throughout and around her. It sounded so familiar and yet so strange that she could've sworn she heard it at one point in her life. But she couldn't be certain.

"I…...I don't know you…" her own words sounded strange to her ears.

You failed me, Adelina.

"Who are you?!"

A light appeared in the distance, a breath of air that swelled her lungs. The darkness didn't seem so constricting but as she stepped forward to greet the figure in the middle of the light, her heart stopped. The figure was her mentor, Nightcrawler, his face and form horribly disfigured.

You forgot about me.

She shook her head in the negative, her heart pounding hard. "No…"

You left me behind.

"I didn't want to leave you…. I swear." She reached forward, only to jerk back when her mentor snapped at her digits. Tears flooded her eyes. "Please, Mr. Wagner, believe me! I didn't want to leave you behind!"

Because of your cowardly actions, I perished under the Phoenix…. You killed me. Nightcrawler's horrid gaze lowered to meet hers, it's your fault that I am dead. It's your fault that your parents were killed.

Voices flooded the room, voices that were both familiar and unfamiliar to her. But those voices whispered blame her for anything and everything. Each one of them reaching a crescendo, until it felt like her ears were bleeding and her brain was going to explode.

"NO!" She shouted, falling to her knees with her hands clasped over ears. The voices did not cease, and it seemed that nothing would block them. She sobbed, which mingled with the voices and screams, though she assumed that the screaming was coming from her.

"ENOUGH!" She shouted, drawing herself up to full height and flaring out her wings despite the pain in the left. The visage of Nightcrawler disappeared like a puff of smoke and the voices quieted for a moment before the volume increased. Chains appeared around her ankles, wrists and waist. She pulled against them, struggled as she did so, but they, unfortunately, held. She knelt, suddenly content with the situation that she had found herself in. As the chains rattled, the only other noise that lingered in the rooms, Adelina shut her eyes tightly, desperately to block out the voices that continued to break her down.