The Dark Odyssey {Unedited}

The Bloodletting [Short Story]

"What the heck is going on?" One of my classmates yelled and stood up. I jumped forward and pushed him on to the ground just as an arrow came through the window and everybody else did the same. I could barely hear anything.

"Those are the attack alarms, you dummy." I shouted at the classmate I was on top of.

"What does that mean?" A girl off to the side of us asked.

"Were none of you paying attention, during any of the thirteen drills we've had this year?!" I shouted at them. They both gave me this apologetic look. "Someone's on a suicide mission." I sighed, and got off of my classmate and made my way over to the door where my teacher was. "What are we supposed to do?" I asked her.

"Do you believe in the gods, Miss Marc?" She responded.

"Yeah... sure. Why?" I replied.

"Because you better start praying for the Guard to get here faster." She told me. I rolled my eyes and looked into the hall and saw a straight path to the campus armory. There was an archer at the end of the hall that was still firing, and there were quite a few arrows in the door now. I jumped up to look out into the courtyard, it was empty except for a few bodies. That meant that the third year class was inside the building somewhere. Some of them had to be fighting back. I looked back into the hallway to see if I still had an open path to the armory; I was not waiting to be saved.

I rushed into the hallway, my teacher tried onto grab my arm, but I was too fast. I heard another arrow being fired and I purposely fell on my butt and slid the rest of the way out of harm. I ran down the second hallway, the armory door was wide open. Once I reached the door I looked inside. Something was flung at my head, I ducked just in time. I looked up to see Saher and the two other boys from earlier who had been trying to kill each other. Saher looked at me in shock. "I am so sorry." he said and helped me up. "What are you doing in here, Fallon?"

"I'm impatient." I responded to him and grabbed the nearest sword from the wall. "You?" I asked.

"Same." said the boy in the corner with bloody knuckles, as he already had a sword in his hands.

"No." Saher said and took the sword from the boy. "We came in here because it was the closest cover. Isn't that right Arra?" Saher asked the boy he took the sword from.

"Yep." Arra rolled his eyes, but had a disappointed look on his face.

The other one in the corner, whose whole face was covered in blood and bruises, walked up to me and put his hand out. "I'm Hardin, it's nice to meet you." He had a soft voice and seemed like a nice person, which was unusual for this place. I took his hand and shook it.

"Fallon." I responded and then looked over at Saher. "So does that mean that you aren't going to help me?" Saher looked down at the sword in his hand, then back at the other two boys.

"Are you sure about going out there?" He asked me.

"The guard should be here by now, which means they're probably not coming." Arra shouted in Saher's face. "I don't know about you two, but I am with missy over here." He grabbed another sword off the wall and walked over to me, Saher looked down at the blade again.

"Fine." He sighed and started to walk out the door with us.

"Wait guys!" Hardin shouted and all of us stopped, looking back at him. "Have you guys gone insane? Those guys out there are going to kill us. This is isn't a drill! This is real life." Saher went up to him and put his hand on Hardin's shoulder.

"It's going to be okay." Saher said calmly and then Hardin collapsed on the ground. "He'll be fine." Saher sighed and lifted his hand. Saher turned to the two of us and walked out of the door. I found out later that Saher used pressure points to knock Hardin out, which the Academy apprentally teaches in year four.