125 Up the Mountain

Jayde had no interest in fighting children, activating her fire magic shield, she weaved her way through the crowd of people, but instead of going forward, she made for the open space to the left. Jayde wasn't the only one who had decided to circumvent the brawling crowd. The twins, as well as the young girl Jayde had spoken to earlier, were also weaving in and out of the crowd making their way through to the open area.

Once Jayde broke through the crowd, she sprinted to the open path leading up the mountain. Looking back at the young people fighting, Jayde was surprised that they seemed to be only interested in fighting each other. Jayde felt like something was wrong, but couldn't put her finger on it.

Pushing the issue to the back of her mind, Jayde raced up the mountain path, the twins and the girl that she had initially spoken to only a couple steps behind. All too soon the twin boys overtook Jayde. The four of them run hell-bent up the steep incline. Small beads of sweat drip down Jayde face and her breathing was becoming labored.

The twin boys were about twenty feet ahead when Jayde caught a blurry dark shape out of the corner of her eye.

"Watch out!" she yelled.

A dark shape leaped on to one boy closest to it, without thinking Jayde withdrew her sword, and calling her fire magic, weaved five firebolts. Waving her hand she directed the firebolts into the dark shape, instantly incinerated it.

In the time that it took Jayde to reach the fallen youth, more than a dozen dark shapes had sprung around the four of them. Swinging her sword up Jayde finally recognized the attacking beasts — direwolves.

Shit! Jayde thought.

The direwolves on Doha were just as nasty spirit beasts as those on Telia, although they looked slightly different, they were vicious pack animals that loved playing with their prey. Standing over four foot tall, their intelligent yellow eyes flashing. Lips drawn back their gums glowed red, while their ivory fangs dripped saliva. They were a frightening sight to behold.

Seeing that the fallen youth was still lying on the ground dazed, Jayde snarled: "Get the f*ck up and defend yourself."

Jayde ordered awoke the dazed youth from his stupor, quickly he jumped to his feet and withdrew his own sword, the four of them automatically moved closer together, facing outward, with the backs facing each other, the prepared to meet the direwolves.

The direwolf closest to Jayde leapt to attack her, stepping forward Jayde infused her fire magic into her sword, and with a mighty thrust, her sword penetrated the direwolf's chest, directly piercing its heart. Lifting her right leg, Jayde kicked the direwolf off her blade, before swinging around.

Rolling to avoid the next attack, Jayde swung her blade and sliced cleaning through the next direwolf's neck, to her fire infused sword, the direwolf flesh was as soft as butter.

Takara had leaped off Jayde's shoulders the moment the battle had begun, crouched down he watched the battle carefully, prepared to release his aura if Jayde fell into a dangerous position. From his vantage point, the could see that Jayde was handling these direwolves with ease, she seemed to dance in between the direwolves, reaping their lives with a single sweep of her sword.

Within twenty minutes all the direwolves were dead, the corpses littered the ground. The three youths seeing that the fight was over, fell to their knees panting. Jayde looked around warily, sending her magical senses out to find out if there were any more threats.

Sensing nothing dangerous approaching, Jayde reached into her satchel for a small cloth to clean her blade. Since she could not use her spatial ring in public, she had purchased the leather satchel when she bought her clothes, it hung on her right shoulder, the strap lay across her chest and the bag hung on her left hip.

After cleaning her blade, Jayde sheathed her sword, before incinerating the bloody cloth.

"We better get a move on before the blood here draws more spirit beasts," she said matter-of-factly, before reaching down and picking up Takara, then she turned back to the path leading to the top of the mountain.

"Hey wait up," one of the young boys called out.

Turning to look at one of the twins, she raised her eyebrow.

"Um, thank you for saving me, by the way, I am Nova Cloudswift," he said closing his right hand in a fist, he placed his fist over his heart and gave a small bow.Since Jayde had little interaction with the people of Doha, it took her a second to recognize that this was the standard way of greeting people on Doha.

Repeating the same greeting Jayde introduced herself.

"That is my older brother Ash," Nova said pointing to his twin standing next to him.

"Jayde, I am grateful to you for saving my brother, we owe you one," Ash said.

While Jayde and the twins were introducing themselves, the young girl walked over.

"Hello Jayde, sorry I forgot to introduce myself earlier, I'm Raven Clawrage."

"Hello Raven," Jayde said, "look we really should get a move on, it's not safe here."

"Jayde right," Ash said.

The four of them broke into a jog, but instead of racing against each other the four of them jogged together. To conserve their strength the four of them were silent.

Two hard fights later, the four youths were looking disheveled, their clothes were torn, and they were covered in multiple scratches, they had also come across numerous battle scenes, and a few seriously injured youngsters. Raven had informed them that the teachers at the school would attend to the youths.

In the last fight, both Nova and Raven had been injured quite badly. They had both taken a low-level healing potion. Looking up at the position of the sun in the sky, Jayde estimated that they had maybe an hour before sunset, the sky was already starting to show the beautiful colors of the sunset.

Seeing Jayde concerned face, Raven looked at the injury on her leg, it was healing too slowly, Nova was in the same position. The two of them were not going to heal in time.

"Jayde, you and Ash go on ahead," Raven said with a forced smile. "We are just going to drag you down."

"Raven's right brother, you need to leave me and go," Nova said calmly.

"Never Nova, we both get in, that's the deal."

"Don't be a fool Ash, this is the last year that we can apply, you know that," Nova said sharply.

Damonia would only accept a student under the age of eighteen. Raven and the twins were seventeen years old, this would be the last year that they could try to apply.

The twins started to argue again. Jayde wasn't quite sure if it was normal or not, but these two twins seemed to fight a lot. Rubbing her forehead she yelled: "Enough!"

"No one is getting left behind, Ash you grab Nova and I will take Raven. We running out of time, so get a move on!"

Jayde barked order jolted the two boys, they stared at her blinking owlishly. Jayde in the meantime went over to Raven, grabbing her right arm, she then braced herself and hauled Raven up, then supporting Raven's weight she starting to move in the direction of the school.

"You're a fool, you should just leave me," Raven muttered.

"Nonsense, the four of us made it this far together, we sure as hell going to make it to the end together."

Raven was taken aback by Jayde statement. Initially, when she had noticed Jayde looking at her life disk with interest she had thought that the young girl was going to try and attach herself to her. That is why when Jayde had been distracted by the griffins she had quickly moved away.

Raven had been surprised to find that the young girl whom she had written off as weak was ahead of her when she made it to the mountain path. When the direwolves attacked the girl had immediately jumped into the fray and helped Nova. The past couple of hours hanging out with the twins and Jayde had been an eye-opener for her.

She would never have believed that strangers could rally together and fight their way through the obstacles as they had done. Raven had tried the Damonia assessments two times before, and each time the youths would turn on each other. Sometimes even wounding another youth to attract the attacking spirit beasts so they could escape.

Determined not to bring this girl down with her Raven gritted her teeth, and using all her strength she picked up her pace, soon the four of them were jogging again, Raven and Nova's faces were pale, but showed grim determination.

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Quote of the day

"The Pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails." -- John Maxwell