The Fifth Element

The first thing to emerge from the walls I didn’t think had ever been human. It had a skull shaped like that of a deer, with two very long antlers sprouting from the top of its head. The rest of its body, from the neck down, resembled that of a gigantic human, give or take a few odd portions, like its extremely long fingers. Most of its body was covered in coarse brown fur and the parts that weren’t, were bare bone. The thing looked evil, which led me to the question whether or not the thing I was doing right now was evil.

In every story I had ever heard or read, the Necromancer had always been the bad guy. Of course, I hadn’t believed Necromancers had actually existed, until a couple of weeks ago when I had discovered I was one. But if the stories had been onto something? I mean what kind of person disturbs the dead from their eternal sleep for their own sick and selfish purposes?

My thoughts were suddenly wrenched away from my moral dilemma, by a loud scream. The dead deer man thing had moved when I hadn’t been paying attention, and it now held one of the evil twins in its long fingers and was tugging at one of his arms. His twin on the ground below was frantically shooting green balls of energy at it from his spear, but they seemed to have no effect.

There was a loud popping sound, followed by a scream of pain, and I knew that the deer man thing had dislocated his shoulder. If this continues, it would probably tear off his arm completely, and after that who knew what it might do!

The evil twin not getting his arm torn off by a deer man thing focused his cold black eyes on me and moved his spear until it was pointing in my direction “Let him go, or I’ll kill you! I don’t care what Greta will do to me afterward. My brother is the only thing I have left. Without him, my life is absolutely meaningless.”

“Trust me, if I knew how to make it stop, I would!” I replied, now in full freak out mode. I looked frantically back and forth between the two twins. I didn’t want to witness someone being torn limb from limb, and I didn’t want death by a green ball of energy either.

“Stop it!” I shouted at the creature, but it ignored me and continued pulling at the evil twin’s arm.

I heard something approaching us fast from behind, but I didn’t bother turning around to see what it was. I had way bigger problems at the moment.

“It’s not stopping!” he yelled his face twitching with irritation.

“I’m working on it!”

His cold black eyes bore into me, and with an equally cold voice, he said, “You’re aren’t working fast enough. The end of the caster is the end of the spell so that I will end you now.” The spear in his hands glowed a blinding green.

A second before he fired at me, I felt a hard tug on my arm. Everything went into slow motion while my body fell backward. The ball of energy passed harmlessly over my face and continued down the hallway. An arm snaked itself tightly around my waist, and everything went back to normal speed.

I landed on whoever or whatever had pulled me to the ground. My head cracking against, what I guessed was their chin.

“Ow,” we both said in unison.

I quickly scrambled off of who or what, and when I saw who it was, I wound my arm back and punched him in the side of the face.

“Ow,” Henry said again rubbing his chin and his cheek. I glared at him and brought my hand back for another punch, but he caught it before I could deliver it, “You can do that later, I’ll explain everything, but first we need to get out of here.” He pulled us both to our feet and began dragging me down the hallway.

“I already get what’s going on, that punch was for hitting me,” I told him.

“Then tell me what you think is happening then, I need to know.”

“You pretended that you captured Vivian and my dad, and used that to get inside the school and gain their trust. Then I’m guessing that the three of you were going to attempt to rescue me at some point, but then I found out they’re going to execute them today, and we need to stop right now because I can’t let my dad be killed if I only just met him!”

Henry stopped abruptly, and I almost slammed into him. “What?” he said.

I ignored him and turned around. I could see the evil twins down the hallway, but no deer man thing. The walls had stopped moving too. So, in order to stop my spell, I had to be knocked down? No, more like my concentration had to be broken.

Henry grabbed my wrist and forcefully turned me around to face him, “Repeat what you just said.”

“I said that I couldn’t kill someone in a horrible way-”

“No, not that. What did you say before that?”

“They were both going to be executed today?” I frowned at him confused. Didn’t he know that already?

“I didn’t hear anything about that,” he said answering my earlier question. He looked troubled. “Who told you that?”

“Shirley.”

“No!” he yelled and let go of my wrist.

“What!?” I said suddenly scared.

He looked at me, his blue eyes blazing, ” Don’t you see? It was all a trap. They wanted you to try and escape. They were seeing if you were having someone help you within the school! They suspected you did! Vivian and your father were never going to be executed today!”

“And it was also to draw a particular rat out of its hole.” We turned to see Greta standing just down the hall from us. Standing beside her was Shirley and a man I had seen only once before during my trial in front of the school council and the big four, Hampton Blackwing, Vivian’s ex-fiance. He gazed at me with his dark eyes.

Shirley had her hands wrapped around Hampton’s neck and was grinning at us wickedly. “Hello Henry!” she said gleefully.

Henry gritted his teeth together, and I stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. He looked at me, and I shook my head. There was no way we could fight them. I could hear the two evil twins coming up behind us.

“You lied to me,” I said dryly, looking at Shirley.

Her grinned widened, “I didn’t tell you all lies. I do want to kill Vivian,” her face grew serious, and she moved closer to Hampton, “I don’t want any competition.”

Hampton smirked and pulled her closer to him, “Darling, I told you before. I was just using her to get what I wanted,” he kissed her deeply, and I felt like throwing up. How had Vivian fallen in love with this jerk?

When they pulled away, Shirley pouted at him, “But darling, I still want to kill her! I had to watch her touch you in ways I’m only allowed to touch you!”

Hampton chuckled, “Then I’ll let you play with her as your wedding present.”

I cleared my throat, and Henry elbowed me in the rib cage, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t take any more of “that.” “So are you going to tell us what your plans are? You know gloat about how you were able to outsmart us and everything.”

Greta raised her eyebrow at me, “Oh, so you want to hear it all. Well first, let me give you a little present. Shirley if you would?”

Shirley nodded and detangled herself from Hampton. She snapped her fingers, and the entire hallway filled with a strong wind. The wind was so strong that it hurt my eyes, and I put my hands in front of my face to shield them. The wind eventually died down, and I could see once again, and what I saw shot waves of grief through my body. There laid Danny’s mangled body, still and unrealistically pale. I knew just by looking at him that he was dead for good this time.

Henry grabbed me and brought me to his chest. I didn’t hesitate in wrapping my arms around him and sobbing into his tee-shirt.

“You know why I hate when people cry?” he whispered into my ear. I shook my head, “Because when people cry, it means I failed to protect them in some way.”

I looked at him, “It’s not your fault, its mine. I asked him to come and get me...”

“You shouldn’t have needed him in the first place, that’s my job to come and rescue you when you do something stupid, and I wasn’t there. I’m sorry.” he brushed his finger along my upper lip, then he leaned in and planted a kiss on top of my head.

I leaned into him closer, thinking that I wanted his lips, not on my head.

What was the hell wrong with me? Danny was dead in front of me, and that’s all I was thinking?

Henry was the first to end the embrace, and we pulled away from each other to face Greta.

“Thanks for the present, I hate it,” I said.

Greta put on a fake disappointed face, “That’s a shame. After all that research, I did on how to kill a goblin. It turned out they’re nothing more, then empty bodies running on energy given to them by the souls of their makers. So all you have to do to kill them is, drain them until all their energy is gone. In his case, I just killed him until he couldn’t regenerate anymore.

More tears threatened to spill in my eyes, and I felt Henry reach over and give me a gentle squeeze on my arm. This gave me the courage I needed to banish the tears and look Greta directly in the eye.

“Go on, tell me your evil plans.”

Greta shook her head at me, “Oh dear, you’re going to regret ever asking me that. In this case, ignorance was your best friend.”