Playing With Fire

Chapter 19: A Lion, a Tiger, and a Bear

Miranda skidded on the floor from her landing and whipped around to face me again.

"So you want to make this hard I see," she growled. "Fine. I've got time." She started walking toward me, like a predator stalking its prey. I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared.

When she got within five three feet of me, she started to circle me, sending my nerves spiking. She went on like that, circling me once, twice, three times, four-

Suddenly, she lunged at me, and without thinking I threw my hands out in front of me. In my instincts, I shot out a blast of fire so strong that it blew me backward and knocked Miranda into a wall. The impact was so strong it knocked part of the wall on top of her, burying her rubble and dust.

I slowly walked over to the mess, making sure to be careful in case she popped out. As I got closer, the dust cleared and revealed her entirely covered in rubble. I wondered if she was still alive, but at the same time, how could she be alive? I inched closer the rubble, to try and poke at it, to see if Miranda was alive, but the rumble exploded before I got a chance.

When I say exploded, I mean exploded. It looked like one of the geysers, except with stones instead of water. It was neat to watch until they started falling.  It was like the ceiling was collapsing. I started running for the nearest exit, dodging all the chunks of stone that we crashing down. I got extremely close to getting crushed. I had to backflip out of the way for one, completely stop running for a couple, and dive roll out the way for some others. I was almost to the door when a huge piece of stone came crashing into me from behind, pinning me to the floor. I tried pulling myself out from under it, but it wasn't budging. It didn't hurt at all, I just couldn't move.

I heard a loud roar behind me, and turn to see this huge black bear walking towards me with an evil gleam in its eyes. Miranda!

"Well, looks like you can beat me as a tiger, but think twice before you take me as a bear!" Whoa, she was a lion, a tiger, and now a bear... oh, my! The bear started running towards me at full speed, which for a bear isn't fast, but it's scary. You never want to see a bear running at you.

I struggled desperately to try and get out from underneath the chunk of stone, but I wasn't going anywhere. Meanwhile, the bear was getting closer towards me, and scarier by the second. What to do, what to do, what to do!

I guess luck was on my side today because I didn't have to do anything. In this chamber, there was a huge chandelier, and it was wobbling the whole time from the chunks of stone flying in the air. It finally broke, and at the perfect time! I came crashing down right as Miranda was about to leap at me and landed right on her head, knocking her out cold. As it shattered, I covered my head to protect it from getting cut. I got a couple scratches on arms and some tearing in my shirt, but nothing too major.

I started laughing. I don't know why, but it was one of those, 'did I actually survive?' kind of laughs.

"Yeah, baby!" I screamed with joy. "You can't kill Briana Winters that easily!" And then my joy faded a bit when I realized I was still stuck under some stone. "Oh."

I sat there for five minutes trying to pull myself out before I realized it was useless. Then I tried to melt it, which was harder than I thought, but my white flames did the trick. Soon I was brushing off the magma from my legs and walking through the exit door.

There were guards on either side of the hallway, and each trained their guns on me, but who cares about them. I put up a wall of blue fire between me and them, causing their bullets and swords to melt and for them to be unable to attack me. Also, blue was a nice color. As I walked on, I felt my confidence growing. I mean, who wouldn't? I was literally walking with fire blazing behind me, how epic is that?

"WE WANT MURDER! WE WANT MURDER!" was what I heard coming from another hallway. Well okay then. My guess is that is that is where Bill is planning to kill us.

I walked towards the chanting, hoping that Pax and Trixie were still alive and in there so I could bust them out. I met a couple more guards along the way, so I head-butted one (probably not the smartest idea with my head injuries), burned another, and glared at the other one who fainted on the spot. Well, that was easy.

I got the doors and stopped. They were double wooden doors, and I was very tempted to make a grand entrance. Cameron! You've made me too confident!

In the end, I decided, 'why not?' and shoved doors open, and they clanged against the wall. I strutted in with my head held high and ended up hanging in the air by feet. Well, that made me look stupid.

"Briana Winters!" a voice boomed through the room, and I was turning in my rope, I saw I was in a Coliseum, with about a hundred guards in the stands, and Bill in the inspectors' box. "You are just in time to go first on our execution list!"