Across her lay a thick and heavy wooden beam. It took a lot of manoeuvring before she could free her arms enough to allow her hands get beneath it. She pushed up with all her might. She held it as best she could while trying to shimmy out from beneath it.
The muscles in her arms and back throbbed as she final eased the last of the way out from beneath the beam. She sat up, wiping the clay and dirt from her eyes, which had begun to cake in the rain that was falling heavily. She had no idea how she had ended up outside. Her ears rang and her body felt both numb and aching at the one time. She didn't have time to wonder over her injuries. Everything hurt, but she knew she couldn't stay where she was, let alone allow herself to think where the others had ended up.
She scrambled to her unsteady feet. She shook her aching head and fought to take in her surroundings. Rubble and debris lay everywhere. Thunder tore apart the sky, the wind howled and the sharp, icy rain sliced through the air, drumming against the earth. Yells and screams echoed around the hills, the roar of battle becoming the most distinct and frightening sound of all. She scurried away through the destruction, her feet sinking into the icy mud that was quickly swamping the broken remains of the house.
She swallowed, her eyes wide as she gazed at the remnants of its shell. One side was crumpled, shattered, the other gouged out and hollow. Parts of it were burning, though the rain was quickly suffocating the exposed flames.
Charlotte shook her head, clenching her numb fingers into fists. She could feel the panic rising in her chest, her breath coming in shortened gasps. More than the physical pain, what hurt her most was the realisation that she was alone. She had no idea where the others were. She needed to find them, but she didn't know how, or even where to start looking. Running was her only instruction but now even choosing a direction in which to run seemed impossible. She shoved her wet hair away from her forehead, trying to organise her thoughts, to see through the stormy darkness.
Her hands were covered in mud and blood when she took them away from her forehead and for the longest moment she just stared at them with a mild curiosity. Her body wasn't allowing her to feel the true extent of her pain. She turned her hands over. They were trembling. She was a spectator to her own suffering, an audience member just looking for a distraction from her reality.
As she gazed at her hands, the earth beneath her feet wrenched forward, throwing her to her knees. She glanced up as the violent tremble coursed through the ground and a pulse of red light shot from the other side of the lake towards what remained of the house.
Charlotte threw herself out of the way. The explosion that accompanied the impact seemed to shatter the world, splitting it in half. It tore the shell of the house apart sending splintered shards of woods and glass showering across the lawn.
The sudden intrusion of the explosion on her own panic seemed to bring Charlotte around, reminding her of what was at stake. She shook her head, balling her fists and gritting her teeth.
"Play the game".
The words were a distant echo of a past time and she turned around half-expecting James to be standing by her shoulder. But he no longer remembered those words, and she was alone among the rubble. The words had fallen from her own lips, a meagre shadow of her past life trying to remind her what she was capable of.
Without another thought, Charlotte clambered down from the ruined house to the lawn. Shadows moved about her, each engaged in their own battles as the rain ran down her face. She hurried past them, though they barely had time to take notice of her.
As she ran, Charlotte wondered if she hadn't been knocked out by the first impact that had thrown her into darkness and destroyed the house. The world had deteriorated so much from the moments before, when she had stood in the hall, the other students pouring out of the house onto the lawn. Now she couldn't see any of her friends, the campsite was ruined and the once ice-covered lawns and frozen lake were a wet muddy mess. Lightning continued to cut the sky apart, violet bolts that told Charlotte that Maria Rodriguez was still fighting somewhere, and bright white bolts accompanying the roaring storm that confirmed that Kuba, too, was soldiering on.
CITEȘTI
Feared
SF'Play the game, she thought, remembering the only three words that had helped her to survive at Kingston. Only back then she had known the game, she had known what they wanted her to be, what they had wanted her to do - this man was different. She d...
Thirty-Nine: Battle
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