Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets) (3 page)

“The king says to fire the void. Now,” Tantrus spoke. The soldier nodded. Angwen had heard what was said and was now on the verge of madness, desperate to leave the battleground.
He looked up at the castle and saw Trailian on one of the deteriorated balconies, about to shoot out an infernal ray of unavoidable fire towards Duana.

Subsequently, a flare of red fire was shot into the sky
Tantrus’ comrade. All the other Adalbheorts had seen the flare – it
meant
something to them.

“FIRE!”
the soldiers stationed around the crumbling castle yelled.

“FIRE!” the word was repeated resonantly from all around
the perimeter. Suddenly, from all directions around the disintegrating monument, bright balls of white light were speedily shot into the sky, dwindling into tiny stars in the distant universe. All soldiers, all monsters, everyone involved in the war fell silent – the vicinity was a graveyard and the wind gently howled as they all stared at the sky.

And then
, as if it were a tiny emerging spot, a darkness began to grow. It spread throughout the sky and descended to the earth.

“RETREAT
!” a soldier yelled. The murderous war instantly resumed, but now it was about the Adalbheorts trying to escape and the Balamirs keeping them there.

“They activated a void,” Trailian said
to himself, horrified. He looked back at Duana, stuck on the ground and completely helpless in the war around her. The darkness was falling from the sky and its gravitational pull was increasing, vacuuming everything into its pit. It pulled soldiers into its depths with their screams lingering after them. The entire alien forest was uprooted and sent hurtling upwards into the falling darkness. Men were flying upwards to their deaths helplessly.

The evil
Trailian, still preying on the wounded woman, took a deep breath and the streak of fire left his hand, aimed directly at the weak Duana who had no idea it was on its way to end her life.

Angwen was
standing firmly on the rock with the wind rustling around him as the void attempted to take him in. His eyes were locked on the beam aimed at Duana.

“NO! ELISEDD!” he yelled viciously through the screams of men.
Suddenly, Duana gasped as she felt a cold hand enclose around her mouth. Angwen had no choice – he didn’t want her dead. He grunted and struggled, his hands gently letting go of the surface of the rock as the void attempted to swallow him. As he let go, he shot out his hand to the ground and it suddenly ripped open with a monstrous explosion. The eternal pit in the ground was reversing the effect of the falling darkness but took everyone down with it. The ground around Duana crumbled, taking her miles below as the Balamir castle collapsed feebly in the chasm. Angwen was pulled back down along with all the other soldiers. Everyone fell into the eternal mile-wide crater. But in Angwen’s last effort, he conjured the darkness to go down with them.

The
Unavoidable Genesis

“
I don’t know how you do it.”

I snigge
red, adjusted the goggles and pushed them up my nose.

“
I
really
don’t know how you do it,” Jaden continued.

My
name is Aden Blue.

Aden
Jordan Murdoch Blue to be extremely precise. I usually went by A.J., Jordan or my
actual
name – but not Murdoch. I
loathed
that excuse of a name.

I rolled my eyes and exhaled, slamming the medical needle on the table.

“No, seriously…how
do
you do it?”

“
Do what, exist?” I resumed sewing up the cut I had created in the frog in front of me.

Jade
n scoffed and pulled his latex glove-covered hands from his white lab coat pockets.

“
No. I mean, be one of the smartest in school
and
one of the most stupid,” Jaden concluded. I chuckled lightly and dramatically wiped a tear from underneath my eye.

“
You know, I’m actually surprised you’re dissecting the frog
as
asked.” My chuckle faded and I stared at Jaden with my lips clenched together and blinked once at him.

“
You’re going to pull a prank, aren’t you?” I sniggered and got back to dissecting the frog. Jaden sighed out of distress and rolled his head in circular motions around his neck.

“
Aw come on, Aden! You’ve gotten sent to the headmaster’s office more than once – and we’re
only
in the first term –”

“
What are you talking about? We’re in October; that’s quite a long time away from September,” I interrupted.

“
Exactly, the school year has just restarted. Mum’s going to flip
a
lid
if you get sent back!” Jaden whispered in hisses. I kept looking up suspiciously as Mr Leery patrolled around the lab tables.

I stuck my tongue out of
the corner of my mouth as I quickly swapped the dissected frog for a prosthetic one underneath the table.

“
Aw no, Aden; what are you doing?” Jaden asked stressfully. I slammed my hand lightly on the table and rolled my eyes at him.

“
See,
this
is what you get when identical twins pair up as lab partners.”

“
Uh, Aden…we’re fraternal twins. One’s witty, the other is dreary; one’s cocky, the other’s amusing,” Jaden sang to himself. He quickly took the prosthetic frog and plunged it underneath the table. We quietly wrestled as I tried to keep the fake one on the desk whilst Jaden attempted to keep it concealed.

Mr
Leery made his next stop at our table. He was tall, with long curly black hair, a thick black moustache, looked as if he were in his mid-thirties and wore a deep blue suit with a lab coat over it. His voice was dreadfully broken, sounding quite close to a bear.

“
Aden, Jaden…how are we coming along?” he asked, intimidating. I exhaled after Jaden had managed to win and I enlarged my eyes, causing Mr Leery to take a step back – I had this bizarre effect on people. Most think there’s something wrong with the size of my eyes. They sort of come off a bit larger than usual (specifically like coins), but they aren’t disproportionate to my face or anything of the sort. I just seemed to be able to make people think I was looking through them.

“
We’re done. We followed all instructions and finished stitching the frog back together. It should take some time for it to become
conscious
again though,” Jaden said. He gulped nervously as he prodded the frog’s body. With one quick hit I gave him on his hands, he stopped.

“
Quit doing that!” I snarled.

I looked at
Mr Leery from eye to eye with mine half shut – without a single care in the world. I felt my hand touching the frog’s body. Our teacher blinked once after examining the specimen on our table.

“
Nice work, Mr Blue…you too, Mr Blue.” He turned and headed for the next table. I quickly called him out.

“
Mr Leery, is it possible you could call us by our first names. Since we’re both…you know –
Mr Blue
,” I said whilst glancing around. I quickly scratched my neck frantically and put my hand back down.

Mr
Leery chuckled. “You’re funny,” he said, walking away casually.

“
I was…being serious,” I said timidly undertone after he had already left. Jaden snickered.

“
No
one takes you seriously. It’s no surprise, really.”

Jaden let out a sigh of relief and looked at me.

“I can’t believe we’re twins,” he said. I rolled my eyes. Suddenly, I heard a loud
pop
and my goggles were covered in what looked like pink wads of gum.

The whole class looked back and
erupted in laughter; even Jaden and Mr Leery. I wiped the substance off of my goggle screen. I quickly took them off and slammed them on the table.

Steam was curling up in
to the air, emitting from the table. I looked down, still surrounded by laughter, only to see the frog, burst with steam ascending from its guts.

“
Now how
is that fair?
You
get to pull a prank?” I asked out of annoyance. Jaden was busy laughing maniacally.

“
What are you talking about? That wasn’t me,” Jaden answered through his chortled belly laugh.

I sighed.
“My hands feel hot,” I complained. Suddenly, the bell rang and the lesson was over.

“
Okay! Don’t forget your essays on marsupials due for tomorrow,” Mr Leery said as the whole class rushed out into the corridors, hanging their lab coats on the hangers allocated to that purpose on their way out.

I adjusted my midnight black blazer on me. On its left pocket was the sch
ool crest, a green clover in a badge. The trousers were also midnight-black, matching the blazer. We wore plain, crisp, long-sleeved white shirts and were forced to keep the top button buttoned at all times. The tie was striped emerald green and black and we were asked to wear any shoes of our choice as far as they were black and formal.

The girls were to wear either tight fitted black
trousers or a black pencil skirt with black tights, a long-sleeved white shirt, the school blazer and tie. The same rules of footwear applied to them too – unless off course you were a senior, where your code of dressing was given some amount of leniency.

“
I feel uncomfortable,” I complained to my brother. We walked out into the hallway through the student crowd who were either unnecessarily blabbing away or going to their lockers. Jaden was the pacifist and smart twin – no words needed to describe me because I was his
exact
opposite.

We attended an enormous
, intimidating, private school called
Cressile
in Richmond upon Thames; London. We were in year nine. It got annoying, looking identical when we were younger – but our physical differences kicked in later during puberty. However, Jaden and I had the tendency of looking older than we were.

We were
both freakishly tall for our ages (6’1” to be exact), the same height; marble-skinned and had the same hazel coloured eyes. But I was the curly devil, with a vast amount of frizzy russet hair. I had a thin and long face with a defined jaw. My nose was somehow long and my ears were small – always hidden behind my curly mane of brown hair. Matching my tall and elastic body, my arms were long and thin. But uncharacteristically, my legs were longer than my torso.

Jaden
, on the other hand – with a head full of long, drooping, dirty blonde hair with hints of black here and there – seemed a little more normal and so did his name: Jaden Dyfan Blue. Unsurprisingly, his limbs were very similar to mine. He often gave the impression he was always angry, since the edges of his eyes seemed to mostly be in slits. His face however, was generally like mine – long and thin. We were different from everybody. We never really knew how. These differences were physical – everybody we saw or looked at had
some
sort of ‘norm’ to them, something common. In fact, something that looked relatively easy to the eye. But for us, we were so strange and bizarre, just seeming to pop from a crowd. Why, a family once walked up to my mother, siblings and me and asked what part of the world we were from. I always thought we got it from our mother. She was naturally, unbelievably beautiful – a siren, almost. She had been graced with effortless beauty.

We walked through the hall slowly, clutching
the straps of our bags behind our backs and a few books in our hands. The end of school was a moment I could definitely not wait for.

“
No, seriously, my neck feels sore,” I grumbled. I rubbed the back of my neck and itched madly.

“
Let me see,” Jaden said, pushing his way past. He lowered my collar. My neck was turning pink and I had red blotches starting to surface. Jaden winced.

“
Urgh, looks like you’re breaking out in a heat rash.” I scowled and continued itching. Jaden pinched me brutally.

“
Stop itching
! You’ll make it worse!” he said. Suddenly, through the main double swinging doors down the hall, came a girl nudging herself past other students – it was either that or students were terrifyingly moving away from her. No – wait….yeah, they were terrified of her.

She was
an average height, sixteen-year-old girl with a silver stud piercing on her lower lip. She seemed classy in a black pencil skirt and black tights. Her white shirt seemed uncommonly clean and her blazer had not a
single
crease on it. She was a senior in the graduating class here. I guess that explained why she was allowed to wear black and white knee-high Converses. She was a back-length chestnut brunette with a thick fringe over her forehead and was gifted with the thin, yet athletic, figure of an acrobat. Her skin seemed slightly paler than Jaden’s and mine and I couldn’t help noticing how incredibly smooth it was. She was on her phone, texting as she strutted down the hallway. People practically made an aisle for her in fear as she advanced.

We walked ahead and she stopped right in front of us
, dropping a hip, slamming her phone shut and stuffing it in her pocket.

“
Hey, losers,” she snarled viciously at us. She had no care in the world. At least, that was the only expression I got from her gleaming hazel eyes.

“
Is mum here?” she asked us whilst folding her arms.
Yes
. She was Jade. Jade Mallory Blue, our elder sister and unfortunately the first Blue offspring.

“
How should we know? We only just got out,” Jaden and I said simultaneously. We had the tendency of doing that. Jade quickly grimaced and put her manicured hand on her mouth.

“
Aden, why do you smell like vomit?” she asked with her eyes clamped shut. My eyebrows squeezed together in confusion.

“
Oh, right, that’s not vomit – it’s frog guts.”

“
What, did a practical joke backfire on you?” my sister asked sarcastically.

“
No it…it combusted,” I said, scratching my neck madly.

“
Stop…itching, you mongrel!
” Jaden snarled, grabbing my arms and keeping them in an arm lock. “All right, okay,” I succumbed, before he let go.

“
What’s wrong?” Jade asked confusingly.

“
He’s breaking out in a heat rash,” Jaden answered. Jade sighed and looked at her watch.

“
We should get going,” she said, with a somewhat saddened look in her eyes.

“
Why?” I immediately quizzed. Jade exhaled and looked at me, slightly disappointed.

“
A.J.,” she said softly.

“
You don’t remember?” Jaden interfered.

“
Remember what?”

“
We planned to go to dad’s gravestone today. Mum doesn’t know. If she did she would get all…
emotional
,” Jade answered.

“
Well, sorry for forgetting…this itch –
kind
of distracts you.” I replied, attempting to scratch. Jaden simply stared at me with his eyes
uncomfortably
wide open every time my hand came centimetres away from my neck.

“
Oh my goodness, I have to scratch – it’s starting to burn!” I complained.

Jade kept looking ahead
curiously at the main door down the hallway.