Sooo… Basically, I wrote this story in my head a while ago, when I first listened to the audiobook of kotlc, and now I'm adding in new additions. If you have suggestions, tell me, and I'll try and credit you! Buuut… We all know who the Shade is! Do you guys like my addition of Tam and Linh to the story? What do you think Kae is gonna ask them to do? And, most importantly, were you expecting the pyrokineticy? (Is that how you spell it?) Enjoy reading!
I fell back asleep after my mom came in to assure me that Kara was alright, but then I woke up far too early to go to Exilium. I got dressed, and tried to eat something, but my stomach was crawling too much, for some reason.
We're about to leave for Exilium, but nobody has seen Kara, so we try to open her door. It's barricaded. It takes all five of us to push it open, which is surprising, because it was only blocked with a chair. Kara's smart at setting things up, I guess. Maybe she'll be a technopath, like Dex?
'What the-' mutters Keefe as he picks up a piece of paper off of her bed. The blanket is upside down, and the room smells weird, but I'm too focused on the fact that Kara is nowhere to be seen. 'She left,' he says softly.
'What!' I exclaim, snatching the note from his hands. 'Gone to do something important. Don't worry, be back after school. Trust me. -Kara.'
'What?' Dex asks, leaning his head over my shoulder.
'What's going on?' my brother mutters, rubbing his forehead.
'She said she had a nightmare,' Sophie slowly says, seeming to think about every word as she says it. 'And this is knocked over.' She gestures to the floor, where a stack of books on telepathy, and the small empty wooden box they were sitting on, are strewn about the floor.
'Do you think my mom grabbed her?' Keefe asks.
'No!' she assures him, glaring at the paper as she takes it from me. 'I think she just… Left.'
'Her Exilium clothes are gone, and we're going to be late, so I think she went there,' Fitz tells us, glancing at Kara's closet.
'What is she thinking?' Keefe whispers.
'I don't know, but I'm with Fitz. We'll probably find her at school. I'll tell Mr. Forkle, and then we'll leave.' Sophie closes her eyes for a few seconds, and then slips on her mask and her hood. 'We're good. Come on.'
As soon as we glitter into the campus, though, all thoughts of Kara flee from our minds. 'Where are we?' Sophie and I ask softly.
'It doesn't matter,' a coach snaps, and we swivel around. All three of them are standing behind us, and the other waywards are pretending not to eavesdrop. I look around for a wayward with no pin, but can't see her in all the clutter.
I can see the Shade guy standing on the outskirts, along with the hydrokinetic. But nobody else is near them.
The coaches start warning Sophie about asking too many questions, but I keep scanning the crowd, not really paying attention. There's someone without a pin, but is it her? There's someone else to the right, but, again, I don't know if it's Kara or not.
The coaches finish ranting after a few minutes, and order us to our tents. I'm still searching the pins on the waywards with blue handprints, and barely fumble to levitate up when the others do. As I keep searching, my eyes meet a figure, sitting in the far back of the blue tent, with no ability pin, trying to avoid glancing around. Especially at the familiar five-pinned girl in purple. Sophie. Who else would be trying to not be seen by Soph?
Fitz is right next to me, but I can tell he's having a telepathic conversation, so I subtly nudge his arm. When he glances, annoyed, over, I hear, What? echoing around my head.
I nod towards the girl, and his eyes light with a mixture of annoyance, confusion, and worry. But he goes back to talking to Sophie, so I don't know what's going to happen next. Then, suddenly, Sophie bolts from the tent, Fitz following close behind. I decide to throw caution to the wind, and run after them, but my coach grabs me just in time. I see Dex and Keefe being stopped too, and all the waywards watch as Sophie and my brother levitate off the cliff. The person I think is Kara hangs back, watching all of this with thinly masked stress, and I know it's her. As I stare closer, I can definitely recognise her almost green blue eyes. It's definitely her.
But I have to pay attention to my friends who are doing things wrong, according to these stupid coaches, so when they come running back up a few minutes later, dragging a plague-ridden gnome and calling for the physician, Keefe, Dex, and I run over to help.
'We need to get him to Luminaria!' Sophie says, and the coaches seem to roll their eyes through the cloaks.
'We're all banished, remember? And none of us have leaping crystals to the lost cities.'
'I have an idea!'
Sophie drags Fitz back over to the edge, and one of the adults scoffs. 'You can't levitate your way there.'
'No, but we can teleport!' And she drags my brother and the gnome off of the cliff.
Everyone but us screams, and I can see Kara standing on the outskirts, panic rising, and… My eyes play a trick on me, and I almost think her fingertips spark, but she fists her hands too quickly for me to see closely. Just a trick of the light, right? Right. Right? Right.
After they calm down, 'Back to your tents!' is heard around the cliff edge, and we comply. This day just went from bad to worse.