Paladin Clan

~Chapter 1~




Furious and stressed, I pound my feet, feeling the sting vibrate and stab it's way through my heel, gripping the bone. Grinding my teeth, hands in fists, muscles taut, wanting to hit something. Wanting the pain. Cherishing the pain. I refuse to go down without a fight, knowing I won't win, but am too selfish not to back out and hide. I feel the beads of sweat form and drop, leaving a cold liquid path that makes me shiver when the wind whistles.

Hiding behind the wall next to the stairs, I can only hear little bits and pieces of what they are saying because of the damage to my ears from the recent blow. Trying to get the fabric off my wrists is excruciating. Holding a knife between my feet, in the butterfly stretch position, I push on my heels with all my might to get the knife to stay in place with I rub up and down the jagged edge to cut the strange cloth holding, cutting and sawing into my wrists. Rubbing faster and faster, only hoping to get free before one of them defeats the other.

Thud! And a yelp.

Crap

I push faster, needing to get to him, needing to help him.

It hits like a tidal wave, everything goes silent. The leaves and wind stop blowing from the torn off parts and pieces of the house. Jared and James are no longer making sounds of struggle. Instinctively I stop, the only thing moving is my heart. Feeling the cold breaths I take sting, sink and shiver into my bone, vibrating down my spine, creating more pain with every rise of my chest.
I wait for something to drop, move, explode, or die.

My mind is flashing ideas across my eyes of what has happened.

Chuckling fills the air and it's not Jared.

no. no. no. No. No. No. NO.NO.NO. NO!NO!NO!NO!

I rip my wrists across the blade, slicing my arms and the fabric. I pull myself up and over the railing of the stairs, landing with a heavy thud on the main level and only see Jared. Barely breathing. Green liquid pours from his body, sliding into a pool around him. His knife is in the green blood stained wall above his head.

I stammer backwards into the door behind me, surprised how fast the burning spread. Ripping the blood-dense sleeve off my arm with strength I didn't know I had, a dark, glowing green shot out from the middle of the rose, fanning out to a delicate blue.

Not again! Not again.

I shove my hands onto the sides of my head as reality, and air smother my lungs and mind. Tremors violently run through my body, causing the ground to come up and meet me. My last thought... not again, and I slip off the edge of the cliff I have been holding onto, falling into a dark, restless, painful end.



~Chapter 2~