The Celestial Chronicles | Book 1 | Quest For The Celestial Artifacts & Dragons

☀️ Chapter One 🌑

2298
Milky Way Galaxy
Planet Earth
Desert Sands, Nevada
Desert Sands Prep Academy
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If anyone had a self-assured hubris, it would be none other than Varian Cohan. 

He stood at the bottom of the climbing rope that scaled up the ceiling of the gym at Desert Sands Prep Academy. 

He pulled his neck length black hair into a ponytail while his brown eyes looked at the perfectly shiny golden bell ten feet in the air on the rope.

He smirked as he glanced over to his PE teacher, Ravello Ramirez, who held the stopwatch in his hand.

Varian was about to ace yet another thing he was overqualified to handle at this dumb little prep academy for the so-called brainiacs and child prodigies, none of which compared to him. If he had been given the choice, he would have completed the curricula in a matter of days, instead of slogging through the school years like every regular person. 

Ravello's brown eyes focused on the stopwatch only to glance up at Varian for a brief moment. He was his least favorite student and in his 30 years at the academy, no one held a candle to Varian.

Varian was no doubt special. That was the only word most people could say for someone like him. Most admired his brains and wits, but not his personality or him as a human being in general. That included his teachers, like Ravello, who had to have a high tolerance for people like Varian.

Ravello furrowed his brows with a frown on his lips. "Cohan, it seems you're the first . . . again to attempt to do the rope climb today." He spoke with a flat voice. "Ready?" He pressed the stopwatch making the clock count down. "Go!"

As soon as Ravello had uttered those words, Varian jumped onto the rope and was scaling it like no one's business. Each hand over hand brought him a great distance, his muscles flexing with each grip.

In a matter of seconds, he rang the bell and dropped from the top, firmly planted his feet onto the foam mat with one leg tucked, the other stretched out and a hand on the mat. "Beat that," He spread his arms open wide and puffed out his chest.

Ravello sighed and looked at the stopwatch. "Twenty seconds, Mr. Cohan, I don't think anyone will be beating your time," He said, marking it down on the paper on the clipboard in his other hand. "As usual." He mumbled under his breath.

Varian puffed out his chest as a grin grew on his lips. He was proud he had left his classmates either with jaws gaping and wide eyes or furrowed brows and death glares. All of which he was all too pleased to accept, whether they were happy or not for him.

Ravello frowned deeper the more prideful Varian had gotten. "Okay, Cohan, depuff your chest and sit down over there by the bleachers. We don't need another repeat of last week, none of us want to deal with any more bloody noses and fist fights." He sternly told Varian. 

Varian recalled the exact experience he was talking about. He had been in an all-out brawl with one of his classmates, who wasn't here due to Varian breaking his nose and ending up getting an infection. That kid was still in the hospital, thankfully no one pressed charges and just chalked it up to boys being boys. 

Hara Karnuche narrowed her brown eyes as she fingers one of her black pigtail braids around her fingers and growled. "I can't stand him! He's such a show-off!" She exclaimed, crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes at Varian. 

"Not only is he good at everything he does, but he also has a major pride problem and is a bad boy, not your classic bad boy, just a grade A bully. What are the odds that the smartest kid at school is also a troublemaker?" She added with a huff, tapping her foot rapidly on the floor.