Chapter 19: Digital Dragons and Dishwasher Demons
Chapter 19: Digital Dragons and Dishwasher Demons
🐉 Some lessons bite back.
---
Junie kicked open the dusty door to the new elective classroom with unnecessary flair. "Okay, it said 'Monster Taming 101' on the schedule. That's definitely more exciting than Calculus of Doom."
Lila peeked in. "Is that… a giant egg sitting in a microwave?"
The room looked like someone had crossed a petting zoo with an arcade. There were glowing nests, floating containment spheres, and one suspiciously humming sink.
At the front stood Professor Runesmith—a stern woman in a lab coat embroidered with flame-resistant runes and what appeared to be claw marks. She turned, deadpan. "Welcome to Advanced Applied Monstralogy. This week: digital familiars, microwave dragons, and handling possessed appliances."
Junie raised her hand. "Just to be clear, we will get to keep something with wings, right?"
Professor Runesmith stared at her for three solid seconds. "If you survive. Probably."
Junie grinned. "Awesome."
---
🔥 First Assignment: Hatch a Familiar
Each student was handed an egg.
Not a regular egg. These pulsed with coded energy, wrapped in glowing circuit veins and soft heat.
"Your bond with your creature will be determined by your emotional state and how you treat it," Professor Runesmith explained. "Treat it like a weapon, and it becomes one. Treat it like a partner… and it might not bite you in the face."
Lila's egg glowed with a cool blue hue. Calm. Controlled.
Junie's egg, meanwhile, vibrated like it had just downed an espresso shot and then exploded into flames.
"IT'S HATCHING!" Junie screamed.
A tiny dragon burst out, snorted a fireball at a nearby smartboard, and sneezed out three sparks and a confused chirp.
"…Is it normal for familiars to set things on fire in the first thirty seconds?"
Professor Runesmith wrote something in her clipboard. "Yours is a Spitbyte. A rare subclass. Likes chaos. Might grow wings. Definitely eats batteries."
The dragon blinked and immediately bit Junie's shoelace.
She cooed. "You're perfect."
---
🚿 Then the Dishwasher Screamed
Midway through taming practice, a loud rumble echoed through the floor.
The kitchen wing's dishwasher had gone feral.
Possessed by a corrupted cleaning algorithm, it launched forks like missiles and screamed ancient binary.
Lila yanked her dragon-free egg under her arm. "What's wrong with the plumbing here?!"
Runesmith sighed and hit the emergency button labeled 'OH NO NOT AGAIN'.
Sirens howled. Students screamed. A mop bucket exploded.
Junie charged toward the chaos with Spitbyte perched on her head, spewing sparks like a tiny flamethrower.
"I GOT THIS!" she yelled, hurling a fireproof pan at the rogue dishwasher. It roared.
Spitbyte flew in, bit through the power node, and belched out the last remnants of corrupted code in a puff of smoke.
Silence.
Then the dishwasher coughed out a folded piece of paper.
Lila picked it up. It was covered in symbols—runes mixed with old-school hexadecimal.
"A… prophecy?" she whispered.
---
🧾 What the Prophecy Said
It spoke of an ancient entity sealed in the digital plumbing of Tempest High:
> "When dragons rise and echoes awaken, the Wyrm Below shall stir once more. Beware the fractured tide and seek the shattered vault beneath the Hall of Glitches."
Junie: "Okay. How dramatic. Did someone summon Shakespeare's ghost with a coding degree?"
Lila's brow furrowed. "Echoes… that has to relate to Echo-L1. And 'fractured tide'? Maybe the system's backup layers?"
Their bond deepened—Lila calm and analytical, Junie reckless and fiery. Somehow, it worked.
They weren't just classmates anymore. They were… co-commanders of chaos.
---
🐲 A New Bond
That night, Lila's egg hatched.
Her familiar was elegant—smooth, glass-scaled, and shaped like a serpent with wings of light. It curled around her wrist like a bracelet, blinked once, then said: "Query: Define friendship."
She smiled. "I'll show you."
---
💥 Final Scene: Danger Brews
Beneath the school, in the echoing pipes where corrupted code roamed freely, something moved.
A shadow slithered beneath the vault.
The Wyrm Below—dormant for decades—had sensed the awakening familiars, the legacy keys, and the stirring of Echo tech.
It turned toward the light.
Hungry.
---
🌀To be continued...