Chapter Fifty Nine

The coach finally decided he was done punishing me and let me carry out the same drills as everyone else. Since my magic was back I was totally fine through all the drills that the coach took us through. This was also the first day I had had nothing to do with Armensia in a long time. It was relaxing in a way even though I knew that I eventually had to get back to saving their world. I therefore decided I would be tailing my best friend so I would see what my friends were going to be doing in Armensia today. When we were done with football, I quickly hit the showers and was out before Thomas even had the chance to get a word in. I knew from previous encounters that he had a lot he wanted to discuss with me, no doubt it all concerned his hate for the Purgers. Come to think of it, Ryan never showed any hatred towards Thomas at all. Either it was Thomas who was holding on to a grudge or Ryan was just really good at hiding issues as he did each time the Purgers approached him with a seemingly urgent message and he treated it like it was nothing.

I walked out of the shower rooms in an effort to get a good hiding spot where I would begin tailing Kendall the moment he was done showering and had to get to the others. What I hadn't accounted for was the maiden who always awaited me when I was done with my training. "That was quick," I heard her cheerful voice say as soon as I stepped out of the boys' locker room. I internally groaned at the inconvenience this situation posed me.

"Why do you always wait for me?" I asked somewhat desperately.

"What kind of question is that?" she scoffed with her arms folded across her chest, "we're friends aren't we?" she asked.

"I would like to think so," I said flashing back to the drama she tried causing the day before. I decided I would have to look for the artras the moment I was able to free myself from Sonia. We began our walk home and I noticed how reluctant she was to keep up with my rather quick steps.

"You seem to be in a hurry," she said after a while.

"Yeah, I have to get home and finish up with Mr Bergstrom's assignment," I said.

"Oh, come on, we both know he has never given you any assignment of the sort," she said. I would have retaliated, but the facts were obvious. She knew that the only reason I was meeting the teacher was not in any way related to academic purposes. "So you doubt me as a friend, huh?" she asked dejectedly.

"Getting framed in your first days of a friendship isn't exactly ideal now is it? Besides, you are still new to school, who says you are meant to be in our band of misfits?" I said to her.

"Of course, I am. Why wouldn't I? No one else at that school knows about magic," she said, "where else would I fit in?"

"If you don't intend to tell any of us that you know magic then I really don't follow the way you are thinking," I told her.

"Can we change the subject?" she asked pouting. She had lost her cheerfulness once again, which wasn't a good look for her to say the least. "I wanted to ask you something," she said grabbing my attention.

"What is it?"

"Why were you late to school this morning?" she asked, "and what was with your foul mood?"

"I woke up late," I said.

"That can't be all that happened," she complained when she realised I was not disclosing any more than I had already said to her, "come on, the whole morning you looked like you were thinking of something. Something was bothering you." I continued to remain quiet.

"I don't know what to tell you," I whispered.

"Why are you guys so secretive?" she groaned as though it deeply frustrated her which only struck a nerve. I remembered how she had deliberately refused to disclose anything about her ring's origin and yet here she was judging my friends and me for being so secretive.

"I don't know what you mean," I said, "What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly that, is there anything I am saying wrong?" she rambled displaying her agitation.

"Enough about me, what about you? How are you? Can you believe I have never seen your parents?" I said.

"Of course you have never. Haven't you noticed that you always go straight into the school building without even looking back to see if any of your friends are still in the parking lot. You don't even wait. The same applies to all your friends, you guys all go straight to the lockers and wait there as you arrive.

"Yeah, we do, it is a whole system that took years to come up with. Though you are right, hadn't thought of it that way," I said thinking through what she had just said. It wasn't like we agreed it would be like that all the time, but rather picked up after time. We all found ourselves meeting there so we would eventually go there if we all wanted to regroup.

What amazed me most about this girl was how she was always able to divert the conversation the moment it was going in the direction of revealing more about her. And yet here she stood in front of me claiming that my friends and I were being very secretive. It was hypocrisy of a high level. We got to her house without another word from me mainly because I was in no mood to continue our conversation. I had finally resigned and let her walk at her snail pace. Eventually we got there, it wasn't as if the road itself was going to get longer and keep me from getting home. I planned to go to Armensia the moment she got into her house.

"I guess we finally got home," she said somewhat nervously.

"Yes, we did, as was our goal of getting here," I replied indifferently.

She walked up to the front porch before turning back to face me. "Thank you for walking me home," she said taking a slight bow.

"Sonia, keep this up and you just may lose all of us as friends. Of course, like I mentioned earlier, there are lots of students you can make friends with at school. You are still the new kid," I said before walking away, "see you tomorrow."

I walked on for a minute with the intention of getting home and stopping time before I jumped on to Armensia. The neighbours were being quiet today, but then again our neighbours weren't being any bit noisy either. I stopped by Mrs Sharpe's house, our next-door neighbour to at least see if she was present and surely enough she was seated in her house watching the television. Guess today was just a quiet day to begin with.

Right before I turned to face our house, "Kevin," I heard Sonia yell distance behind me. I turned around and surely she was jogging up to me. She had already changed her clothes into something more casual. 'What does she want with me now?' I internally groaned. I had no time whatsoever to deal with her when I was already late.

Isaac's POV

It was nice to have lunch with everyone again like it was supposed to be. We may have added two more members to the crew since we last hang out like this, but the more the merrier, right? We were yet to hear what Ciara had to report from Armensia today. We sat in the bleachers watching Kevin and Kendall practise whilst she explained the situation.

"So what's new in Armensia today alpha?" I asked her.

"Well, I hope you all enjoyed yourselves today, because we may be headed for our deadliest assignment yet," she said.

"What are you talking about?" Jacob asked. Sonia had already left like she always did around this time to God-knows-where.

"The Seven Dark mages will be able to activate the powers of the Beasts they enslaved to their maximum in two weeks from now. They cannot do it, however, without the totems that each Beast handed over to one of the factions in Armensia," she said.

"What does that mean?" I asked her, "and when you say use their powers to the maximum, you don't make much sense considering no generation of artras has been able to defeat them at their strongest. We only learnt of magic a few days ago. How are we supposed to beat them when they are only going to get stronger?" I was rambling, my imagination had switched into overdrive. The Dark mages were too powerful already as they were now.

"I know that, but the power of the Beasts was more than for simply destructive purposes," she said.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"The rules of Armensian magic were set up by these very Beasts. Making these rules requires tremendous power, so much so that the Beasts did this together. Spells this grand cannot be cast by a single entity. The Dark mages did not have the power to cast these spells even if they tried, but in two weeks' time they will be able to," she explained.

"What about the totems you talked about?" Jacob asked her.

"After the Great Beasts were done weaving the rules of magic in Armensia, they decided to seal away that power since they would never need it again. Something tells me they also did it in case something like this ever happened."

"So what are we going to be doing today?" I asked her.

"Well, the totems are seven in total. Two of them are protected by the ice and fire dragons. Another is protected by the Dragon riders in the forest of Alm. That leaves the one in possession of the dwarves and the other two in custody of the Mages and combat elves," she said.

"You have mentioned only six of the totems, where is the seventh?" Jacob asked making me count through them.