CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Everything is quiet, too quiet. There are no sounds across the front quad, no sounds of classmates talking and laughing to each other, and no sounds of music being played anywhere. There were no sounds at all. Everyone was asleep. All that is left is the Earth. Clouds are still here and so are the trees and oceans.

The wind rustles the trees causing them to sway back and forth. All except one, which stood rooted to the ground, staying put and standing tall and proud. He refuses to move at all. His roots go even deeper into the ground causing it to crack and break apart. The wind blows hard again rushing past the trees moving them to and fro, all except one.

Eric Trethaway stood at the base of the tree, breathing heavily, his palms pressed against the rough bark. His nails dug into the bark as another wave of pain racked through his body. He clenched his teeth, the blood pounding through his head as he tried in vain not to let himself be taken over again. He knew it was no use, no matter how hard he fought the power took him over and he didn't know what happened until he heard the next day.

The last time he found out that he had attacked some of his students. Some of his brightest and best students. Now they could be brought to talk with the Dean…that was one less person that he wanted to deal with what was going on. What if they were in a meeting and he lost control? His secret would be out. He knew what would happen; he had seen it before. Shortly after he had been taken over, he started to study about it as much as he could. Every Elemental that he had come across had been taken in by the government and never heard from again; as far as they were concerned. The families asked about their missing family members and had been told nothing but lies about how their family member had gotten a job and moved somewhere else. Those that did come back, they weren't the same as they used to, and they never talked about their ordeal.

He didn't want that to happen to him. He believed that he could get through it on will alone.

"If you leave I will find you."

The voice again. It always came back when he was trying to get away. "Get out of my head," he said, tightening his grip on the tree, bark getting under his nails. He was squeezing so tightly that the skin ripped and started to bleed. "Leave me alone."

If you die I will follow you. You're not going to get rid of me."

Eric let out a scream, his voice echoing over the front quad as he felt the familiar feeling of pain rack through his body. It was taking him over again. He could do nothing about it but let it do what it wanted and hoped that when he woke up the next morning that he didn't kill anyone. He had almost done it before; he didn't want to face that again.

He knew that it was useless.

He had to give it what it wanted. And now, it wanted to get rid of the four young adults that were starting to get too close to revealing its true identity.

A/N: I noticed that I was a little overdue with the 'a look into the past' chapters since I wanted then evenly spaced from each other as the story goes on. So here's the third installment for it. Of course it doesn't answer many questions, but as I said before, they're short on purpose so you can see the slowly start to fill in the holes with the rest of the story in a past meets present sort of way.

I hope you guys liked it and I'll update again soon.

Cheers,

-Riles