A sudden and thunderous boom rattled the walls and left a lasting stir as my body began to quiver. The ground rumbled enough to move the stone foundations of Cinderfall, a force that fell with a fright so fierce it electrified my leg with sensations hitherto forgotten. It felt close, whatever caused it, yet I had lacked the imagination for what could be waiting outside Rorke’s classroom. All I could do was look to the door as a strange chill preyed over me. I resented that nauseous rub of anticipation. And from the mysterious rumble that left even Maister Rorke staring at the ceiling in confusion, there followed a muffled commotion coming from outside. He carefully wrested the arcane textbook from my hand, while I sat there stupefied. Only words ecaped my mouth.
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“What was that?”
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"Pollux, stay here," the professor said. He sounded sober in his request. With grit, he grabbed his staff from its ornate rack behind the teacher’s desk. As far as I could remember, he had never touched that thing while a student was near, nor deigned to wield a catalyst on school grounds. I think I had yet to see a teacher wield an arcane conduit. So, his actions him pulled me away from caution and toward fear.
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Maister Rorke carefully opened the classroom door and peaked outside before marching out. For that brief second, a cacophony of cracked stones and pitched voices echoed from outside. When he shut the door behind him, that's how the commotion died. Quiet as it was now, something stirred in Cinderfall Academy. A new air of mystique threatened to blow into something, dare I say, chaotic. Time slipped through me. Curious as I might have been, a pound of ice choked the back of my throat when I studdenly began trudhing to toward the door. Yet that’s where I paused, unable to poke my head outside. I don't know why. If something sinister lurked beyond the door, did it make sense to wait? Could I really hide? Or did curiosity’s thirst lure me without regard for the unknown? It didn’t matter. My limbs acted on their own as my fingers found the knob. One twist, the world opened.
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Panic brushed my senses, a panic so dense I could probably grasp it if I reached out. Quick steps, a clamor, I watched the scene play out before my eyes: a burning courtyard, toppled fountains, students in whinnied flight like a pen of frightful sheep without shepherds. It was chaos as people fled in all directions, toward whichever way was out.
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Cinderfall had three gates: one for the outerwall, one for the central ring, and one for the inner keep. They were always open, except in the late evening. They were open now, even as people fled. So, what was everybody running from? It was hard to see past the chaotic mob. Worse, there were no teachers to manage them; no order; and I smelled smoke.
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I just kept thinking about what kind of scary thing unseen would sink the hearts of mages en mass? It was nothing obvious, at first. Perhaps a fright, a wight, a fixation of horror that had come to terrorize Cinderfall. The panic rose like a tidal wave. So fast. It was surreal because this school was supposed to be home of the gifted and powerful. Cinderfall had the aura of invincibility. From the ashes was our motto, the idyll notion that nothing could kill us and that something could come from nothing. But when I saw the armed guards scurrying across the battlements like headless chickens, fear hit hard and hit harder still when their eyes peered within the walls instead of without. My nerves finally cracked when I caught several bloody corpses splayed across the stone towers.
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I should have listened to Maiser Rorke.
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I flinched; I gagged. I couldn’t imagine how the bodies got that way.
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Because I could not run, I stumbled. Because I stumbled, the scene lingered in my thoughts long after I turned my head. After one small step, my whole body felt heavy, overburdened by many possibilities trampling over my courage. The murmurs that usually swept this once-peaceful courtyard became muffled by the sound of thunder. Thunder?
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Though clear skies had marked the beginning of the day, in the eastern sky, the clouds blackened by the second. So, I asked myself if we could survive thunder and catastrophe? In the end, I decided that I didn’t want to stick around to find out.
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Where did the thunderstorm come from?
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"Elise!" I shouted. "Roy!" I didn't see them. I could hardly find a familiar face among the fumbling mass of bodies. All I could do was trudge across the courtyard, breathing heavily through meek effort. But when the crowd came, they shoved me down, and I fell to the ground as they raced overhead in a blind flurry. Because of that, I resorted to a crawl. Then, as if possessed, I shot back to my feet.
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Within avenues of thoughtless mayhem, no one had a sense of their surroundings or themselves. They just rushed forward and away, guided neither by plans nor caution; meanwhile, I could barely carry my feet in the jaunt toward the other end of Cinderfall. Pursued by doubt, fear, and all the things that mystery can belch, I trod over hard stone and sought after the stone keep nestled behind the inner wall. Protected and warded by magic, it had to be the safest place, right? Everybody else moved in that direction, though my lingering doubt persisted as I found the entrance to the library.
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On the other side of the courtyard, through the upper tiers and past the palisades, safety waited for me. I thought… I believed. I knew the layout of the school, and I somehow felt as if I was the only one. The size of the school was finally working against us… or in our favor.
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By the ring wall, at the precipice of the gatehouse, my legs buckled from exhaustion. In a moment of longing clarity, I remembered how much I wanted to see the grand lecture halls of Cinderfall Academy. It proved better in reality than in my head. How sad now that smoke was rising from the other side of the inner gate. The cold prick in my leg burned into a seething cut that was barely tolerable when I heard screams and shouts within. Afraid to ponder what any of it meant, I fell into doubt.
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Would the world end with me being helpless?
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...Or I was just a scared girl looking for any excuse to hide from sad reality. I closed my eyes, doing my best to muffle the fear and let my gut decide where my legs must go, shivering all the while.
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Must keep moving.
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After moments that felt like eternity, my legs started to cramp up the road toward uncertainty. But on my way down the path, from of the corner of my eye, a horde of silhouettes rose above the walls. Though hardly distinguishable, I saw them. I saw that they were not human. The way someone knows thirst, I knew.
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Something truly evil had entered Cinderfall Academy. It… they… whatever came was coming through the gaping hole in the outer wall. It was visible as soon as I leaned on the gatehouse and peered beyond and back the way I came. Whatever had torn out a piece of that stone wall had caused the quake from earlier.
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My willpower began to dwindle when I realized that Cinderfall was under siege. During it all, since they were nowhere among the faces that fled, I carried this vain hope that my friends had escaped. I clung to that hope. They would’ve been heading to the keep like the others. Seeing them again would mean escaping the things now crawling through the gates.
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Undead.
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and then Add to home screen.