Come Hel or High Water

[Thai M. Zoofquesque]

Come Hel or High Water

Summary— Mallory Moore has always known she’s not normal. Those at her school instinctively avoid her; most animals, excepting wolves and ravens, run from her; every plant she touches wilts and dies. She doesn't have a mother and her father ignores her. Her half-sister thinks she's a freak. So when a new boy tells her she's special, but in a very eerie way, then that has to be a good thing, right? Right?

Rating— T for safety—includes swearing, graphic violence, and utter teenage stupidity.

Notice— The prologue has nothing to do with demigods. It is only in the first chapter that elements of the storyverse begin to emerge.

--

The dead know everything.

But they don’t give a d**n.

--
Prologue
Before
--

If there was one thing I didn’t have to do, this would be it.

“Dad, please. Please don’t make me do this. Oh, God, Dad, don’t make me do this, I seriously don’t want to do this, please, Dad, please?”

“No.”

“Whyyyyy?!”

“Dolores, you have to go to school—”

From my perch on the window-seat on the landing of the stairs, I could watch unnoticed as the little brunette on the story below stomped her foot and screeched childishly at the man standing before her. “Daaaad!” she was whining, her blue eyes – though I couldn’t see them, I knew all her tricks that she used when she wanted something – filled with dramatic (and usually fake) tears. “All the kids laugh at me! They call me a freak just ‘cause their brothers and sisters used to go to school with Mallory and she acted like a freak and then I had to go there too and so now I’m a freak and I don’t like it! Dad! Make Mallory stop being a freak!”

“Don’t call your sister a freak, Dolores…”

“Why not? It’s true!”

“Even if she were a freak, I couldn’t stop her.”

“Why not? She’s your daughter, right?”

The reply was tired, and from my vantage point I could see him press his knuckles to his temples as he spoke. “Yes, Dolores, Mallory is my daughter.”

“Then you should have some control over her, right?” Dolores said triumphantly, in the tone she always used when she had gotten her way and she knew it.

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not!?”

“Listen, Dolores, your sister’s going through a pretty tough time right now. You know Alyssa just had that move to Europe – ”

“And a stupid move, too!” My sister’s voice was pitched lower now, in her “I-am-going-to-act-like-an-adult-now” voice. “Couldn’t Alyssa’s parents just have taught math to poverty-stricken Americans instead of, like, Germans or whatever?”

My father – tall man, dark hair, green eyes, doesn’t care much about his appearance so I won’t either – turned away from my little sister and began making for the kitchen, a basic way of saying “this conversation is over” without actually saying “this conversation is over,” which would have just annoyed Dolores and made her talk in an even higher-pitched tone – not to mention faster. Of course, the ten-year-old airhead didn’t catch on and followed him, jabbering constantly on not wanting to go to school the next day. Reluctantly, I uncurled my legs from their so-so-so-warm place under my body and swung them off of the seat, heading up the next flight of stairs to my little garret.

My room was a little round place, about eight feet high – only two feet taller than I was, sadly enough, and I was still growing – and with warped, damp-spotted wallpaper covering the walls. My bed, which was a four-poster swathed with dark purple curtains and whatever else I decided to hang on it, sat next to the only window, and it was this to which I went. I sprang forward; it was barely ten steps from my door to the bed, and so it was with ease that I did a belly-flopping bounce through the curtains and onto the mattress.

But. No time to play. I shuffled onto my knees and scooted forward, throwing the curtains out of my way and shoving the old-fashioned window shutters open. The cold December breeze blew onto my face but, undaunted, I thrust my head and shoulders through the window and looked down.

My tower-garret-thing was far above the rest of our mansion-like property; the highest room in the house, my dad liked to tell me. I closed my eyes and tilted my face up to the overcast sky, breathing the cold wind deeply and evenly. A spatter of rain was due later, I recalled from the weather forecast earlier; but maybe I could get to Lux’s house before the rain really started coming in –

A splatter of wet struck my face, and I opened my eyes. The clouds had become darker and gathered about the sun. I scowled.

If it wasn’t my sister, it was the rain.

Ruining my fun.

Of course, I reflected, as I drew back into my room and regretfully closed the shutters, the rain didn’t always ruin my fun. I’d spent many a night reading by candlelight – the old tower-garret-thing didn’t have electricity, much to my great chagrin – while the typical Seattle rain pounded on my well-slated roof. Dolores never wanted to come up to my room while the rain was going on; she never wanted to come up to my room, period, which was fine with me. But especially not when it was raining. The slates did some sort of weird reverberation thing that sounded somewhat like a large, violent drummer.

I, of course, liked it.

I’ve always been freakish that way.

Suddenly a flash of white caught my eye; as I jerked around, the flash became a pale face, framed with dark hair, glaring at me through venomous purple-red eyes lined with black bags. I yelped, falling backwards off of my bed and smacking my head against the wall. Tears came to my eyes, but I wiped them away. The momentary terror that had gripped me melted away, and my abruptly-racing heart began to slow.

Slowly, I crawled back up onto my bed, and the face confronted me again. This time, though, it didn’t seem quite so threatening; the evil visage had become that of a girl, roughly sixteen, with almost milk-white skin and black, bone-straight hair that fell to about her elbows. Her violet eyes, wine-colored at first, then changing to a dark cherry as she shifted her weight, stared sadly back at me, framed by bags below and dark eyebrows above. I tilted my head. She tilted her head.

I exhaled slowly and crawled off the bed, moving unsteadily towards the mirror. “God, Mallory,” I whispered, the sound somehow filling me with relief. “You really need to stop being afraid of your own reflection.”

I reached forward and straightened the mirror unnecessarily – it was already straight as a board – and stepped back, critically examining a snarl in my hair. “Stupid… hair,” I muttered, somehow glad nobody was there to hear my immature ramblings. “Why can’t it just stay straight? Stupid hair. Stupid stupidity. Stupid… me for saying the word stupid so much.”

Finally realizing I was talking to myself, I sighed and turned back to the mirror.

“You, my friend,” I said firmly, jabbing my finger at my own reflection, “are not a ghost thing. You are me. You are Mallory Kate Moore. You are sixteen years old. You do not have a boyfriend and you are sadly lacking of friends except for Lux and until recently Alyssa, but Alyssa moved to France so her parents could teach English there, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…”

I trailed off and stuck my tongue out. My reflection mirrored the motion, her eyes shifting back into a violet hue.

“Stop freaking changing eye colors,” I huffed, exasperated, and without another word I turned around and picked up a matchbox. The sound of the rain increased as, with some trepidation, I struck a match and put it to the first candle wick.

The warm glow from the candle calmed me down, and almost placidly I took the first candle around, lighting up all the others. By the time all the candles were lit, the rain was practically roaring outside and on the roof, and I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed.

I took my heavy book of Narnian Chronicles out from under my bed, and clambered up onto my bed. The false-fur blankets surrounding me were warm, shutting out the chill of December that the room always let in. The candles lit the room with a soft, buttery light that made me think of winter fires and summer bonfires at the beach and toast in the morning when it was too cold for cereal…

I touched my finger to the Calormenes on the front cover of the Chronicles, and then with a quick flip of my wrist, I opened my book and began to read.

[Thai M. Zoofquesque]

Chapter One
Of Lux, Dragons, and New Boys from Norway
--

“Mallory… Maaalllloryyyyy… Maaaaaaallllllllllllllooorrryyyyyyyyy...”

I rolled over, burying my face into the warm fur underneath my nose. It was so warm in my room… and the rain was so soothing… and something squishy was putting pressure on my legs.

“Mallory Kate Moore!”

I shot up out of my comfortable sleep, almost smacking my head on the skull of the bed’s other occupant. The person sitting on my knees let out a surprised yelp and toppled backwards out through the curtains. I sat for a moment, chest heaving with surprise and one hand on my Narnian chronicles, ready for battle.

The intruder was silent.

Then, “Lory! You suck!”

Lux Proler’s head poked back through the curtains, scowling horridly. Her scowl wasn’t very effective; she looked like a gingerbread man come to life, and with horrible constipation.

Lux was a short, chubby girl; together we looked like a pale twig (me) next to a fried dumpling (her). Her skin was a spicy, gingery-brown color that somehow managed to make me feel warm even when we were on opposite ends of a very cold room; whenever she smiled – as she did often – her cheeks bulged up over her grey-green eyes and her teeth literally glittered. Her hair, curly and black, with auburn-brown henna streaks from her last ‘exotic’ makeover, was tied back into a ponytail on that particular day, although usually she wore it down or in one of her ‘special’ hairstyles; these hairstyles usually involved me putting pins everywhere and anywhere with the end result looking like a bird’s nest. Lux wore it anyway.

“Didn’t you know I’m a vampire, Lux?” I returned, stretching and blinking sleepily at her. “When the hell did you get here? And… why the hell are you here? Are you here to stalk me? ‘s not nice, Lux.”

Her cheeks bulged up. Teeth glittered. “You overslept, m’dear Lory.”

…Overslept?

Fu-

I threw off my covers, barely noticing that I was still sleeping in the clothes I had worn the night before. “Why didn’t anyone wake me up?!” I shrieked, with equal measures of panic and anger. Lux raised one paprika-colored finger. “Now, now, Lory,” she began, but I cut her off.

“No. Lux. If I’m late again, Mrs. Cole will kill – ”

By this time I was across the room and digging frantically through my dresser drawers. Within moments I’d discarded lacy red things that I could vaguely identify as last year’s costume for the school play – Romeo and Juliet, urgh; I could never stomach romance – and a couple of ripped skirts, finally grabbing something that looked somewhat like jeans and a t-shirt and skittering off to the bathroom.

Once inside the claustrophobic space, I quickly changed into the garments; they turned out to be exactly what I thought they were. Which was a pair of severely torn jeans and an old grey doodle tee with a bunch of scribbles all over it.

Oh, the joys of not having an alarm clock.

I raced back up to my room, where Lux was waiting patiently, gnawing on something that appeared to be a Sharpie marker. I ignored this – she chewed on things frequently, everything from abacuses to… things beginning with z – and chose instead to grab my backpack from behind the bed and head for the door.
And then I saw the clock.

I skidded to a halt, staring at the Roman numerals on its face, then I turned robotically and glared at Lux.

“So,” I said chillingly. “I overslept, did I?”

Lux was heedless of my irate tone. “Yep.”

“Then why,” I snarled, dropping my backpack once more and stomping over to where I could tower over her, “is it six. f**king. Fifteen. In the morning?”

“Because you were supposed to wake up at five-thirty,” Lux replied, oblivious as always.

“Why?”

“So you could go to IHop with me?” she retorted, in a duh kind of tone. I ground my teeth.

Not just because I was angry, but because she was right.

I hate it when she does that.

“Okay,” I sighed, finally. “Let me find my sneakers and write a note for my dad. But no more sitting-on-my-knees when you want me to get up, okay?”

Her grey-green eyes – more grey than green now, so I knew she wasn’t lying – stared earnestly at me. “I’ll try,” she said truthfully. “But you know I forget a lot of stuff. It’s quite sad, really. I’ll be walking along, just kind of gliding through the day… then boom! I forget something and–”

By the time her little monologue had finished, my shoes were on my feet and I was hopping to go. Whereas twenty minutes earlier I had been quite happy to sleep, now I was eager to go to IHop. So I cut in with a very loud "Lux. Shut up. Just... shut up, Lux. I wanna go to IHop. Take me to IHop."

Lux hopped up readily, still chattering about her memory problems, and I followed her down the stairs, across the foyer, and down into our massive front hall. I snagged a yellow sticky note from the table next to the stairs and scribbled a quick note to my dad. I had to run and slap it onto the fridge while Lux waited impatiently, as she did so often, and then we stumbled out of the door and into the Seattle morning.

It wasn't raining, per say; the deluge that had been hammering on my room the night before had slowed to a light drizzle. I shivered, regretting my decision to leave the house without getting a jacket. Of course, the jabberwocky-thing-that-was-my-friend at my side had to be wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a turtleneck on top of that, and then a hoodie.

I hate irony.

---

So there I was; chilly, aggravated, and hungry, trudging along through the puddle-ridden streets with a dumpling at my side. The dumpling in question was talking animatedly, with much flailing of the hands, until finally she gave up and whapped me soundly on the side of the head with her palm. I let out a surprised yelp and leaped sideways away from her, clutching my skull.

“You. Talk. Now.”

I blinked at her. Lux was glaring at me, arms crossed childishly as she frowned. I furrowed my brow at her in return, confused. “… what?”

“I’m tired of being the one talking,” she returned, uncrossing her arms and putting them on her hips in a diminutive imitation of Dolores when she was irritated. “You. Must. Talk.”

Lux appeared to deliberate for a moment before adding, “Or. Else.”

I arched an eyebrow at her for a moment, then sighed in resignation. If it were up to Lux, I would be her mind-control zombie.

So I offered her my arm. She linked her elbow through mine and we set off once more down the street, this time with me doing most of the talking. We talked about many normal-for-us things; annoying little sisters, the way the trees looked really weird without leaves, the rain, walruses and their subsequent buckets, platypuses, platypus beaks, ducks, duck beaks, the rain, monkeys, and mythology. Of course it all went back to the rain in the end, usually when the sky would surprise us with a random splatter.

The conversation darkened when Lux brought up dreams.

“Tell me about the dream you had last night,” she announced out of the blue. I halted. We were walking down the next-to-last street by IHop (my house was pretty far from it), and the sun was beginning to come up. The sky was tinted with a grey-blue hint, and I knew soon it would rise and the clouds would be visible. As usual.

“Mallory?”

Lux’s inquiring voice snapped me out of my daze, and I shook my head to clear it. “Hmm?”

“Dream you had last night?”

“Oh… um…” I racked my brain. As far as I could remember I hadn’t dreamed at all the night before; I’d fallen asleep to the sound of the rain and the warmth of my bed, not to mention the soothing familiar stories of heroic lions and children come across the wardrobe… “I don’t think I had any dreams last night. Sorry.”

“Night before last, then. Last week. Last month. Whatever your latest dream was.”

I remembered my last dream clearly; a sky reddened with smog, a battlefield littered with bodies… thunder clashing, giant shapes battling in the sky… and a face, half-death’s head, half-beautiful…

“Mallory. Oh, God, Lory. Not again. Do I have to hit you with a book bag?”

Lux’s threat woke me up, and I bounced away from her like I was on springs. “No,” I squeaked. For all that cheery dumplingesque-ness, Lux can smack really hard with bags and books. God forbid with a bag with books in it.

Her hard “I will hurt you if I have to” look melted away, and she grinned widely. “Kay. Good. So what did you dream about then?”

I mumbled something about falling off a cliff and never hitting the bottom, and Lux winced. “Eurgh. I’ve had those dreams. Oh my God, they make me feel so scared when I wake up. And sometimes I hit the bottom and oh God, that sucks so much.”

“Your face sucks so much,” I retorted lamely, my mind on other things – like those devilishly good pancakes, why did IHop have to be so far? – and Lux rolled her eyes.

“Your mother sucks so much,” she shot back, obviously as out of it as I was. I took a moment to process that.

And then I got pissed.

“You’re such a pregnant dog, Lux!” I shrieked, angry tears coming to my eyes without me being able to stop them. “You know I hate it when you do that, you know it! And you’re so f**king insensitive, you tactless platypus!”

I spun on my heel, too angry to listen to her pointless “crap, I’m sorry”s, and hurried down the street. I was practically blinded with fury and anguish; sadly, this was not the first time that Lux had made such an idiotic mistake. Nor was it the first time I had reacted so violently.

I heard a rumble of thunder overhead. Lightning flashed; the sky, which had been gradually lightening as the sun came up, darkened abruptly. A silver car – a Volvo, maybe, I suspected through my haze of rage – flashed by me, belching a foul cloud of gas. Then there was a darker scent; a smoky, charred scent like a barbecue.

But this stench was horrible… it spoke of endless fires and destruction, of dying forests and burning homes…

The smell what was alerted me that something was wrong.

Instinctively I whipped around –

At first all I could see was scales.

Huge, orange-and-red scales, shaped like oak leaves, overlapping and glittering with the faint light in a way that almost hypnotized me. Then the stink of fire and smoke came over me again. I looked up.

Towering over me, almost twice my height, was the monstrous head of a beast. Its snout was short and rodent-like, and large tufts of grey-red fur were tucked like a frill behind its tall ears, which were remarkably like that of a horse. From its forehead rose a thick bone, as in the legends of unicorns. Its eyes were tilted and yellow, and the pupils were straight slits, like those of a lizard’s or a cat’s.

The vaguely squirrelly head was supported by a long, scaly, giraffe-like neck, patterned with the orange and red scales. The creature had three legs; one on the center front of the body, and two hind legs. The hind feet had a single claw larger than the others, like the pictures of velociraptors that I had so often looked over. The head bent down, serpentine neck bending gracefully, until I was practically nose-to-nose with the thing.

And it snuffed at me.

The smoky stench flooded my nostrils, and I stumbled back, wheezing. The dragon – there was no other word for it – let out another satisfied snuff and backed up a little, crouching down into a stance like those of a hunting lion.

It was then that I realized.

This thing was a predator.

And I was its prey.

In a flash I flung my backpack off of my back, running for my life down the street as fast as I could. Behind me the beast let out an outraged roar, which tilted off into a loud chattering noise that, despite what you might think, was just as terrifying as the roar.

Then I heard a cracking and a galumphing noise; duhcrack, duhcrack-duhcrack, duhcrack, duhcrack-duhcrack, duhcrack, duhcrack-duhcrack.

I realized that the sound I heard was the dragon-beast, pursuing me. As it ran, its feet crumpled the pavement beneath it, probably leaving some pretty incriminating footprints.

If, I reasoned, this was all real and not just in my head.

An alley caught my eye and I ducked down it, wishing my sneakers didn’t make such a loud slapping noise on the puddle-ridden pavement. I splashed through a couple puddles, then pressed my back against the wall, trying to keep myself from collapsing into a little heap.

The duhcrack, duhcrack-duhcrack noise came closer now; it slowed down into a bit more gentle duhnk, duhnk, duhnk. I heard a sniffing noise at the entrance to the alley; the dragon-beast was searching, hunting for my scent. I tried to stop breathing.

The snuffling sound grew closer; I heard the slithering of scales slipping against brick. My heart was fluttering frantically in my chest; my shirt was literally shaking from its pounding. I couldn’t breathe. Terror had frozen my throat. I couldn’t move. I was essentially paralyzed.

Now, in the dim light from above, I caught sight of a tuft of fur and scales barely twenty feet from me. The beast was getting closer.

Fifteen feet when I next saw the head; this time it was the eyes I saw, flicking hungrily through the darkness like a cat’s. Watching. Waiting for its prey.

Waiting for me.

The head snaked forward until it was six feet away. I knew now; it had caught my scent much earlier, and it was just waiting for me to make one false move before it struck.

I stifled the scream that was threatening to burst out of my throat and waited for the end.

---

It wasn’t exactly as I expected.

First there was the gentle nudge from the dragon’s snout that I was expecting, having grown tired of my motionlessness. Then, something I didn’t plan for.

A rescuer.

A bright, fiery light suddenly flared up from the entrance of the alley, showing me exactly how long the beast was. It wasn’t very long; I had run maybe forty feet from the end of the tunnel, and the tail of the dragon reached to about ten feet inside. Of course, the neck was curved up and then down to me, so maybe I wasn’t the best judge of length, including the neck.

The light also showed me something I hadn’t thought of at all.

A boy stood in the entrance of the alley.

He was maybe my age, give or take a year; his left hand was set confidently on a sword at his hip. His skin was painted a pale reddish-orange in the flickering light from a torch in his upraised right hand. His hair was deep brown, cropped short and streaked here and there with slightly darker patches of brown. He was even taller than I was, if that’s possible; he stood around six two, his shadow behind him making him seem even taller than he really was.

And his eyes shone violet-red.

I shrank down into a crumpled heap, wishing that I had just decided to not go to IHop. Just kicked Lux out of my house and gone back to bed. Or better yet, not gone to school at all. It was the last day before hols, couldn’t I just have skipped for one day? Maybe? Sort of? Possibly?

Would the scary dragon-beast have pursued me if I had skipped?
The rescuer’s lips moved as he spoke. His voice carried down the alley, bouncing off what was definitely a dead end – I guessed it was good I hadn’t gone any farther. “Ofnir, son of Nidhogg,” he was saying, “I request that you release this girl. I request it twice. I request it thrice.”

… Um. What?

The dragon-beast lifted its head to its grandiose height of twelve feet high, swiveling around to look at the boy. Its tail flicked angrily, and it growled. Smoke trickled from its jaws as it did so.
I gulped.

“Ofnir, son of Nidhogg,” he repeated. “I request that you release this girl, on pain of death. I request it twice.”

Without even requesting it, he drew his blade. It glinted redly in the light, but I thought that was more than just the flames; the sword itself was a scarlet red, darkening to maroon near the hilt. Runes I couldn’t identify – something like a cartoon hand, an upward-pointing arrow, and an inverted, tilted Z – glimmered on its blade in a dark black that caught the light. Without skipping a beat, the boy hefted the sword, pointing it directly at the belly of the beast.

Ofnir – I supposed that was its name – growled once more. But this time the noise was quieter, a hint of uncertainty coloring the sound. I began to breathe again. Perhaps this mysterious stranger would save me; maybe I’d live, maybe I wouldn’t have to disappear forever – or would the monster have left my bloodied body there, mauled so horribly that not even dental records could see who I was…?

Morbid thoughts, Mallory. Morbid thoughts.

“Ofnir, son of Nidhogg,” the boy said finally, after moments of silence broken only by my panicked hyperventilation. “Prepare to die.”

Ofnir didn’t seem to like that.

He wheeled around, tail smashing and scraping against the brick wall, and roared. The boy wasn’t fazed. He didn’t bat an eyelash.
Instead, he charged.

Yelling some sort of battle cry, he swept forward, hurling the torch high above the dragon’s head. Ofnir’s neck craned up, trying to follow it as it carved a burning trail in the clouded sky above use; then it plummeted down, down, and landed on his back.

For a dragon, he was surprisingly flammable.

The flames caught on the spikes that wove down the dragon’s spine; Ofnir shrieked in pain and rage and reared up, foreleg clawing at the air. With an eerie chu-chwiinnk noise, razor-sharp claws slid from the toes of his foreleg. He balanced quickly; as soon as he had found his footing, he charged on only two feet towards the boy. Too late.

The brunette made a leap; his sword hilt was gripped in two hands now as he sprung, the black runes clearly visible against the red. He traveled up, up, and as he began to lose altitude, pulled his hands back and flung the sword as hard as he could towards the belly of the dragon Ofnir.

Blood spurted.

I turned away, hiding my face in the wall, covering my ears as Ofnir let out a shriek of pain. I heard the walls cracking, trash cans banging around as the dragon went into his death throes; watched the shadows of the writhing Ofnir against the fire-lit wall. And then it was over.

---

I stood up, shaking with fear and shock. Had that really just happened? Had I just been attacked by… by a dragon?
And saved?

I turned back to the carnage, keeping my eyes carefully averted from the dragon’s corpse. It was d**n difficult, though; the boy who was my savior was busying himself by ripping his sword out of Ofnir’s motionless stomach. I concentrated on his back, fighting the urge to vomit. Or faint.

He turned around, noticed me staring at him, and must have thought I was about to faint as well. In quick, effortless steps, he was by my side. He put a hand on my shoulder and made me sit down again, saying quickly, “Put your head between your knees. It’ll help, it’ll help a lot.”

I did as he suggested, and a few minutes later I felt a lot better. My stomach was still doing flip-flops, and terror was just beginning to let go of my voice. I rasped, “What was that?”

His lilac-red eyes darkened, and he flicked a quick glance over to the smoldering corpse. It was beginning to disintegrate into ash; as I watched, the dragon’s carcass suddenly deflated, expelling a dark cloud of ash that filled my lungs and made me cough. When it cleared, there was only cracked pavement and bricks to suggest that anything other than I or the boy had been here.

“That,” he said slowly, “was Ofnir. A son of Nidhogg, the tree-gnawer. He and his siblings have been tracking you. He is one of the…” here he twisted his lips, and his eyes flickered momentarily with amusement “…more exotic of Nidhogg’s brood. Born of the union of Ratatoskr and Nidhogg. He does, however, have a brain the size of a peanut, which would only prove the phrase ‘brawn but not brains.’”

Okay, this kid was officially epic.

Except for his news.

I struggled to my feet. “Tracking me?” I demanded. “What? And… who’s Nidhogg? And Ratatoskr? And who are you?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “My name isn’t necessary. You won’t need it. What you will need to know is that this world is a lot bigger than you think, Mallory; and that your place in it is just becoming obvious. You may call me whatever you wish. My father is Týr. I like to be called War.”

Týr… I mused. That name seemed vaguely familiar. Like I’d read it in a book years and years before, but never really absorbed it…

He tossed something at me, and I caught it almost without thinking.

It was a book, very much larger and heavier than my Narnian Chronicles. The runes engraved onto the War-boy’s sword were embossed onto this scarlet cover as well. When I flipped it open, there were several hundred pages of typed text, woodcuts, various sections and names that seemed only vaguely familiar. About half of the book was lined, blank paper, and a quarter of that was written on with an elegant, spiky hand.

I glanced up at the boy and raised an eyebrow. “A journal?”

War’s eyes narrowed. “Read it,” he barked harshly, and tossed something else at me. I snagged it with one of my hands; it was my backpack, left behind who knew how long ago to flee from the now-dead Ofnir.

“You’ll be needing it,” he said coldly, and as I shouldered it, he began to walk away.

“Wait!” I called after him, and he turned.

“Will I be seeing you again?”

For a moment his face softened, and he almost – almost – smiled. “Pray to Odin that you don’t,” he said finally, and turned away once more. I opened my mouth to call again, but he was gone.

This day is turning out to be really, really weird.

---

Once I’d found my way out into direct sunlight (or as direct as it could be, considering the cloud cover), I realized just how late I was.

Running from my mythical pursuer had managed to eat up almost an hour of my time; it was seven-thirty by now and I was running late. My stomach snarled at me, reminding me that I’d missed breakfast in hopes of deliciously good IHop, but there was no time for that now. I took off at a sprint, running down the street with the red book clutched to my stomach and my pack on my back. I cut across a red light, almost getting hit by a car on the way; but hey. When you’ve been almost been eaten and killed by a monster out of your nightmares, you tend not to care about being run over.

Or the road rage that occurs when you run out in front of a car.

I made it to school just as first period ended, slung my backpack into my locker, and followed the crowd that was my homeroom towards the assembly hall, as per usual re pre-hols. I kept my head bowed and my eyes down, trying to present as un-threatening an image as possible.

It still didn’t work. My fellow students parted before me like minnows before a shark, and I managed to make it to assembly hall first. Again.

We filed into the room, which was more like a modified gym; barely large enough to accommodate the entire sophomore class, much less the entire school. A few of us had to sit on the floor, Lux included. I saw her shoot me a dark look for abandoning her as she passed, but I gave her a shrug in return.
I wondered curiously how the hell she had missed a giant dragon-beast chasing me halfway through town, but then the principal tapped her microphone and I turned.

“Hi, chchskkghudents,” she started, then frowned. I heard snickers erupt from around me; the microphone was malfunctioning once more. There was a loud, screeching noise of feedback as she adjusted the microphone on its stand; then she cleared her throat and began again.

“Hello, students. As you’re well aware, the winter holidays will begin next Monday. Now, before I continue…”

She began droning about exam grades and extra credit and extracurricular activities – I perked up when I heard about a photography club and a poetry club, but then the school-induced stupor set back in – and various other boring school items that I didn’t really listen to. I tuned in for the end of the assembly, just like always, since it was really the only interesting part.

“But, in the tradition of our school, I’d like to welcome some new students to our class before we leave for our various vacation spots,” the principal announced, and stepped back from the microphone.

About sixteen or seventeen teenagers filed in; the first one, a petite blonde girl with wide blue eyes that blinked behind her horn-rimmed glasses, stepped up to the mike and introduced herself as Melissa Callahan. There was a smattering of applause, then another student, this one a hulking redhead with a nose that looked like it had been broken several times, stormed up to the microphone and moodily uttered his name; it was Richard Twining.

And so it continued, with the rest of the teenagers introducing themselves one by one, until when they finally got to the end I was nearly dying of boredom.

“Hey,” a friendly, familiar voice said into the microphone. “My name’s Warren Tyrsson, and I’m glad to be here in America. I’m originally from Norway, where I grew up with my parents; it’s lovely to be in some nice weather for once.”

Thunder boomed outside. I jerked up. At the stand was a boy with brunette hair shot through with dark brown; pale skin; and red-purple eyes just like mine.

My rescuer.

[Katheryn Rose♥]

Oooh. This sounds very interesting. I liked the use of a non-canon character (unless she's completely canon and I'm just loosing it momentarily) for your main character.

~Katheryn Rose

[somehero]

Sort of confused, actually.