Tauren
It's a stabbing pulse trickling down my spine that awakens me in the dead of night. It crackles like electricity, sizzling over my skin as it drips down my body. I yelp slightly, more in surprise than pain. The initial light pain fades into a static shock that leaves my hair standing on end. Struggling to sit up, I yank my lamp cord to illuminate the room in light. I don't see anything at all. It's perfectly normal. No electrical shortages, nothing. I'm about to lie back down, absolutely convinced that I'm dreaming a particularly vivid dream, but my phone buzzes, so I glance at the display briefly.
Scorpius's name flashes over the display. I consider not answering, but he's not the worst person to call me at night, so why not? He hates having his time wasted, and so do I. It couldn't take that long. Swiping right, I greet him quietly with a short "Why."
A clamor of voices rise above him and I groan as the faces of three other Hell Zoners pop up on my screen, as Scorpius adds me to a conference call. "Let me amend this. It is three in the fucking morning. I am going to slap one of you and it's not going to be Scorpius —"
"That's what I said!" Aqualia demands, looking extremely ruffled. At least, the outline of her face in the dark looks angry and ruffled. Her camera blurs slightly and she presumably flips her screen over so that the camera goes dark.
"That's what she said!" echoes Leo pompously to be met with a middle finger shoved towards Aqualia's camera lens.
"Shut the fuck up, is what I say!" Scorpius argues back, choosing not to acknowledge my statement. A short fight occurs, but just as I've almost hung up on the call, Aqualia flips her camera back on and demands to know what is going on.
"Shit exploded," Scorpius cuts to the point easily. "One of my walls exploded, to put this bluntly."
Leo grins slightly, his camera view grainy as he hasn't even turned on the light, so his smile is unnatural and strange. Like his fake personality. "That was honestly my fault," he admits. "But. I bloomed!"
"For the last time, you are not a rare flower, Leo," Aqualia whispers, her voice radiating pure exhaustion.
"No — what I mean is that I'm glowing now," Leo states. "I ... think that the stones are radioactive. Because I'm glowing. I touched some cancile and it charged fully."
"Alright, meeting over, someone book Leo into an asylum," Scorpius claps his hands, deeply unimpressed. "And he thought Vienna would go insane before he did, huh. Damn he's stupid. I liked Vienna more, even if she is insane."
"I am actually glowing, dumbass," Leo hisses, quite incensed by now. "I got my powers."
"So what do they do then?" I ask. Like the rest of the Hell Zone, I don't have any abilities. I think that's part of the reason why we bonded, while random people sat there and melted into the shadows or used their other very special abilities.
"I glow. My middle fingers especially," Leo sounds proud of this fact. I squint at the camera. Maybe the pixels around his face do seem a bit lighter.
"What did you say about radiation?" Aqualia inquires. "Because I will fucking tell you, I woke up feeling like I was being electrocuted."
"So did I, bitch! You're nothing special," Scorpius matches her acidic tone.
"Did I ask your opinion? No? Then shut up!" Aqualia snaps back, tuning the rest of us out. Leo and I stare at each other mutely, aware of our rivalry but also aware that we can't punch each other over the phone. Aqualia and Scorpius are just that petty and usually don't say anything useful.
"I've asked you to fuck off so many times, can you do it for once?" Scorpius returns, glaring furiously at his phone.
"Now why the hell would I do that? If you want your space then, you can get the hell away from me."
"They argue like five–year–olds," I murmur. And, seeing that this conversation is never getting anywhere, I hang up. It is odd that all of us have felt electrocuted at what I assume to be the same time. And it's almost like Leo's admitting that it's his fault, given his words. He doesn't do that at all. Nothing is ever his fault.
Checking outside, I see that it's quite late, the sky very darkened. I won't be able to fall back asleep, not in this time, so I switch on the blinding light.
I rummage quickly through whatever I have under my bed, finding the small cancile stone I collected from the forest. Though I can't activate it or put it to any use whatsoever, it does look good shimmering in all of the oilslick colors of the rainbow. As soon as my hands make contact with it, a dim white glow surrounds the stone. I suck in a quick breath as I grip it tighter. That's not normal, at least not for me. Most that are my age consider this reaction from a cancile stone normal. Reaching over to my nightstand, I snatch my phone and slot it into the cancile stone, watching its display light up as I crouch with my hands warm against the stone.
Shit. What if Leo's right?
I'm not calling Leo at the asscrack of dawn. I'm not calling Leo at all. I have dignity. I sit back with a shallow gasp, completely unsure of what to do next. I could call Scorpius – that would probably be smarter. He doesn't give a shit about Leo. And that conference call was most likely very short lived — I'm guessing that Leo hung up right after I did and Aqualia got angry and flustered ten seconds later, leading to her ending the call.
"Hey. Hey Scorps, you know when Leo said he was blossoming?" I ask into the phone, detecting a tired sigh. Scorpius has always been the Hell Zoner that seems mentally too old and depressed to be seventeen. While the rest of us are simply horny dumbasses, and here I refer to Leo and Aqualia. Leo's just daft and Aqualia's just edgy. Me? I wasn't even supposed to be a Hell Zoner, but I could honestly care less. I'm not interested in our all—important groupings.
"It's fading from my mind like everything else Leo says," answers Scorpius with another dramatic sigh. Maybe he is depressed and serious and all that, but the rest of it is just him being a dramatic ass.
"That's normal, but I think Leo's actually right," I pronounce the last three words painfully.
"Oh hello Leo. You really fooled me, I didn't know you had access to a voice changer," Scorpius's tone changes to annoyed.
"I'm not Leo," I insist, exhaling a breath of frustration, "I'm serious. I think I also have the sparkly shit."
"You're trying so hard not to call it a 'power', aren't you?" Scorpius chuckles, something creaks as he shifts, his voice morphing from slightly amused to very irritated. "Hold on."
A vague female voice yells, "Get off the damn phone and take this —"
I do a prompt doubletake as Scorpius groans in frustration. "Wait, is that Aqua?"
"Fuck, it is, yes," Scorpius mumbles into the phone. "If you have special abilities can you just, teleport your ass over here and give her a good reason to leave?"
"I can't teleport, and can't you give her a good reason, or just kick her out? That should be no problem for you," this confuses me. Scorpius never has a problem stating his boundaries with his archenemy, and those boundaries are often very extensive. I've witnessed him pick his archenemy up and catapult her out of his room multiple times.
I can almost hear his grimace over the phone as something slams in the background and he exhales a short breathy yelp of pain. "So I touched her and I somehow, got electrocuted. I can't get her out."
"What is she doing in there?" I hear louder crashing and more pained noises from Scorpius.
"Being an annoying little — NO NO DON'T TOUCH THAT DEAR CEMETAS I HATE YOU —" Scorpius's voice cuts out in a strangled screech as he abandons the phone, the line going dead. I realize that I really didn't have that much time to explain anything to him.
But wait. I did gain valuable knowledge from him, and it's about his nemesis. Aqualia can't electrocute people with her skin; that would be a special ability, and we don't have any. So if Leo can glow, if I can activate cancile, if Aqualia can electrocute people ... then wouldn't that count as an ability?
Isn't there something more special, about gaining an ability? Like some sort of magical event, a realization of sorts. Isn't the event something memorable?
Apparently not. You just realize you have it. But while Leo has a semi–cool ability and Aqualia has a very useful ability, I basically have nothing. That's a problem. I've got to find out what I can do. It can't just be activating cancile, because that's ridiculous and unheard of.
So there's me, unlatching my window in the middle of the night and crouching on my nightstand to slip outside, praying it doesn't crack in half before I'm out through the window. I've no idea how I'll get back up, maybe I'll climb. I'm sure I can figure that out eventually. My window is half open, as if I simply wanted a breath of fresh air in the night. I take off into the woods, leaving the brightly lit Lonely Star behind.
The woods darken quickly, and it's soon that I can no longer see the piercing lights from various rooms. I have to slow into a cautious walk, stepping over multiple branches and arching roots. I don't know quite where I'm going, but I know this forest well even in the night. It's mostly pitch black, flexible branches laden with leaves sometimes slapping me in the face, but I've figured out by now where I'm going.
In fantasy scenarios there is always an ordinary–looking forest, and in the center there is a massive tree usually surrounded by magical crystals. This tree is always named something along the lines of 'Heart of the Forest' and has some sort of magical healing property.
Of course that's only fantasy, and maybe there's an artificially recreated one somewhere in Relixia to satisfy the whims of Celestials. But our forest does have something as near to it as it gets naturally.
It's somewhere near the center of the forest, close to the boundary of Lonely Star. And it is one huge oak, its thick roots suitable for a bench and its trunk knobbly and sloping as it leans to one side. I learned how to climb trees on this one, I think. So when I approach the tree, I can't help but feel calm. Gaining a foothold on a crevice in the trunk, I begin to climb. It takes only a little scrabbling until I'm sitting in the center of the tree, where branches fork out in all directions. Drawing my knees to my chest, I lean against a branch, supporting my body with my palms against the tree.
I don't notice the buzzing in my fingers for some time, absorbed in the serenity of the quiet forest. It's strange, so I look down. Moving my hand slightly, I notice that right where my palm is, there's a small patch of green, maybe a climbing fern. It glows slightly with unmistakable magic.
Carina
It's not unusual for someone to want some fresh air, and time outside. I've seen students mingling outside at midnight. Or sometimes not only mingling – my eyes have probably lost their virginity many times over from stumbling across such meetings.
My feet hit the ground softly and I stumble slightly, standing up to stare back at the building. I sort of want to wander into the forest, but it does scare me at night.
I know; I'm a Darktale. We don't fear anyone. Though Scorpius would absolutely be lying if he said he didn't fear Aqualia.
Really, she's just a dumbass. I don't fear her, even though I could certainly call her intimidating. And it's so obvious that he fears her. It's almost ridiculous that he does fear the Raven Bride. I can't forget the version of her that existed when she was younger. Hell, she could threaten to kill me and I wouldn't take it seriously. Even though I'm sure she could.
People don't typically scare me; not anymore. My cold fingers wrap gently around my throat as I feel for the scars ingrained into my skin before dropping my hand. No, animals scare me more now. They don't care about my ancestry, they just want to see any sort of blood. As I start walking towards the forest, I reason that animals usually stay out of my way. They stick to the darker parts of the forest, past Lonely Star's pathetic little chainlink fence that could only keep rather dumb animals out, like the little quadrupedal invertebrates that scurry around, huge groups of them congregating during breeding season. Those can't chew through metal. I'm more worried about the ones that can.
The rustles only grow louder and more unsettling the further I walk. A branch cracks and my head jerks towards the creature making this noise. Admittedly, I flinch upon seeing it. It's a normal sight; a thick-bodied reptile with nine eyes mounted upon rigid stalks, its miniature arms flailing as it wriggles through the leaf litter. I sometimes wonder how it even moves, but I will admit that this creature disgusts me sometimes.
Not that it could harm me. My footsteps become more creeping as I accustom to the eerie forest.
I almost sigh with relief when I notice the trees thinning out ahead and the thick canopy of the largest tree in the forest. I don't even know what it is. It's just a huge, ancient tree. It looks so mystical with its reddish leaves and dark green bark, and I love that.
However, I'm not alone here. My eyes quickly catch the dark figure hunched in the tree. Whoever they are, they've got to be from Lonely Star. It would be fun to creep up on them and scare them. I already scare people. I get to listen to cautious whispers when they think I can't hear. Stay away from her, she's part succubus we think. Aren't her eyes spooky? Wait, does the Darktale girl have scars on her neck?
It's not odd for me to be known only by my last name. It's not like I have a first name, and that it's Carina. I smile slightly as I begin quietly climbing behind the figure. Supporting my foot, I tap the figure on their lower back. "What are you doing here so late?" I ask casually.
As expected, they jump and scramble away from me. "Carina, you creepy ass!" Tauren yells loudly, showing his surprise ever so clearly on his face.
I'm equally surprised to see a Hell Zoner here in an area that could be considered magical. I think I would better envision Tauren sitting edgily in a dead tree about to topple. It'd be a ridiculous sight, to be sure, but more similar to the Hell Zone. "Well well, it's the dipshit Wilde."
Tauren looks bored at the nickname I've just creatively invented. "Says the Darktale brat. What are you doing here?"
"I need that delicious fresh air," I grin, rubbing my hands together.
"I know you've eaten worms off the ground, but I don't know why you'd try to eat air," responds Tauren as he moves slightly, exposing a twisted young fern.
"Hey! You squashed that —" I complain, eyeing the little yellow–green fern. "And it's cute, but I haven't seen anything like it."
"Yeah ..." Tauren trails off. His voice is vaguely guilty. I look up at him, not really even needing to indicate suspicion before he spills it. "I did that. I just grew a damn plant where I put my hand."
"You did what." I deadpan. "That means you have the, the thing that makes you do cool stuff."
"Powers?" Tauren supplies the word.
"Yes, yes, that, I am living on a single braincell right now," I wave my hand. "Is it just you? Does anyone else know?"
Tauren stares at me with slight distaste. "No, not just me. At least Leo, and maybe Aqualia."
I bolt upright, a wide smile on my face. "Aqua, huh? Don't tell me she's awake right now."
"Oh, she probably is, it's only four in the morning," Tauren leans against a branch. "Don't torment her though. I think she's extremely pissed. Torment Leo instead."
I pull out my phone, immediately dimming the piercing light. "Should I pretend to be drunk or pretend to be extremely mad at him?"
"Pretend to be drunk, because Leo's probably the same," suggests Tauren.
I shake my head at him with a scoff. "We're not going to be doing that, any of that. I want to know exactly how this happened and how I, clearly prettier and smarter than you, didn't get any sort of powers, sparkly shit, or abilities."
"If it depends on those factors," Tauren says in a more lighthearted and joking tone, "then I'd say that's the reason I have these powers – because you're wrong."
"Well," I fret, "this is bad. I'd like to think that I deserve these abilities more than you, thank you very much."
"Awww, you want to grow your own food?" Tauren teases, "Tired of eating cafeteria food?" I can sense the curiosity in his voice as he places his palm firmly against the fern.
"Hey." I freeze, my ears detecting a low rustling in the bushes. "Shut up," I hiss at him. He picks his hand up from the fern, now crawling across the trunk.
We both press our bodies against the trunk, peering down at the base of the tree in time to see a creature waddling towards the trunk. Its steps are admittedly comical as it ruffles its small, feathery wings. It's a predator, though. It's definitely a predator. Its sharp curved teeth could not suggest otherwise, as well as the stench of dead meat hanging in the air.
Worse yet, I estimate it to be around six feet in height. That thing could easily rip me to shreds. And I'm sure it has a good sense of smell.
Shooting a subtle glance at Tauren, I can see the panic on his face. Neither of us expected this odd creature to show up and casually ruin my interrogation with the threat of possible death. We don't dare speak as it waddles around the tree slowly and deliberately.
I brace myself to fling myself out of the tree and take off running towards Lonely Star, but I don't need to. A distant rumbling reaches my ears. It sounds as if it's a decent distance away, however, the avian predator doesn't take any risks. It flaps its wings, propelling itself into an unsteady takeoff.
Tauren slowly pushes himself to his knees, small flowering ferns sprouting where he's made skin contact with the tree. Neither of us wait for the rumbling to increase in volume. We climb down from the tree and break into a run in the direction that the creature's flown off in. Just when I'd thought that the only risk in this forest were the creatures living inside of it.
Tauren's aesthetic is mediocre. I might fix it.