Chapter Twenty four

This morning my mother had snapped at me for zoning out so many times at the breakfast table. I had in the end turned out to be the reason everyone left home late. I hadn't even managed to finish my breakfast because I kept zoning out and to be honest there wasn't anything I was thinking about in particular.

I had just left the table amidst mom's questions leaving all of them unanswered. I even secretly slowed down time so that we got to school just in time, but the damage had still been done. This lesson also seemed to be passing by in a daze. I could barely pay attention to the teacher. Scenes from the previous night kept flashing through my head and I seemed powerless to stop them. I eventually just gave in and let them flash through and their effect on my attention span seemed significant.

That was until Ciara contacted me telepathically. 'Kevin, whats wrong?' She asked.

'Not sure,' I answered. I felt her consciousness seeping more into mine and knew she was trying to search my mind for the problem.

'Damn, your mind is a freakin mess,' she surmised which was kind of obvious to me.

'Thanks for the clarification,' I replied.

'No need for the sarcasm. Anyway, I need to tell you something,' she said.

'What is it?' I asked.

'What happened yesterday was a mistake. I don't know what I was thinking. Im sorry, really,' she said.

'What part,' I asked. I had a feeling of dread well up deep in my gut like this was going to be a calm before a storm. I had suspected that what I was causing my condition was somehow related to the way she acted the previous night, but didn't think much of it. Besides there wasn't anything much she did to cause something this bad.

'Me at your balcony. Sleeping at your place,' she said. I did not know that the day could get any worse than it had already gotten. My heartbeat suddenly kicked into overdrive after getting this information from Ciara. This was followed by an immediate headache and stabbing pain in the gut. Guess that was the explanation for the your disappearance in the morning.

"Is something wrong, Mr. Johnson?" I heard Bergstrom ask.

"I need to use the bathroom sir," I said and quickly got out when he allowed. I jogged to the bathroom and got straight to the sink. I washed my face trying to clear my thoughts, but it was even harder now. If my mind was a mess earlier, then this should be triple of that. I then decided to stop time. Maybe Mr. Bergstrom could tell me what is happening to me. I did my best and focused and soon enough time had frozen. Or so I thought. I lost my grip on time after a few seconds and from there on it just started glitching. Time kept freezing and unfreezing till I stopped trying. I had no control over it any more.

'Are you crazy,' I heard Ciara in my head. In the moment that she spoke I could focus on her voice more clearly than anything else. But it was soon gone and I was back to my mental mess. I wanted to reply, but even my telepathy was not working properly. My thoughts just wouldn't go through the link. I used all the strength and focus on one thing, my room. I was going to teleport there. Through the mushy confusion in my head, I was able to make the jump. Consequently my headache tripled and my stomach hurt even worse.

The dizziness took over as I stumbled to my bed. My energy left my limbs when I was directly over my bed. I collapsed on the fluffy bed and started slowly drifting out of consciousness. "Kevin, what are you doing....." I heard my mother's voice faintly as darkness surrounded me. She sounded like she was far away and shouting all the same, but that wasn't something I could care about in my state.

…...................….

Texan, eldest brother to the evil overlord Travas had always resented his brother for being smarter than him and for his stronger magic prowess. He even hated him more when he was got to be the one to absorb the great White Dragon and Texan got the White Wolf which, in his eyes, was inferior to the white Dragon.

His encounter with the artras had caught him totally off guard. He had underestimated them and almost got himself killed. It was known that sometimes the artras arrived with little knowledge of the way this world worked, but resorting to such extreme measures was a rarity. If it hadn't been for that errand boy that his insufferable brother kept around, he would be dead by now.

Here he was, bound by magical chains that his brother had personally cast to restrain him. The errand boy had teleported him right into their underground part of their lair where Travas had been awaiting him. The immobilising spell had then been undone and he was bound in chains immediately. Now he awaited trial by his own brother. The door opened into what looked like a throne room. It was all being used until the day that they wouls take over Armensia. Their hideout was nicely hidden well in the forbidden zone of Armensia.

It was called forbidden because of the unknown phenomena caused by the dark magic that dwelled in that location. And so Armensians were not allowed to go there. Even so, sometimes the most powerful mages are sent to check the place out for anything out of the ordinary and because of that Travas had us cast cloaking spells on the place he built there.

Texan was held by six guards from the Elven army that had turned dark and was led to Travas who sat on his throne. Besides him four of the seven Dark mages stood there watching. In total they were six in the throne room and only one was missing on an errand he had been assigned. "Put him on his knees," Travas spoke from his throne.

Due to Texans thick body build, the elves would not have been capable of putting him on his knees themselves. He was obviously stronger than them by a lot. Another elf went to a platform that Texan had not yet seen and grabbed a sledge hammer from it. He the came dragging the hammer indicating how heavy it was and swung it with all his might so that it connected with the back of Texans knees. If Texan had been in the mood to be defiant to his brother, the hammer would have merely bounced off his skin, but he too knew when his brother was about to snap and he did not want to deal with the full rage of Travas. He let the hammer buckle his knees and groaned as he settled on the ground. "I had the artras, brother," Texan began.

"Silence brother. You almost jeopardised the entire plan. Can you not be reasoned with, Texan? Do you always require me to speak to you through force?" Travas bellowed, a hint of his rising agitation. His servants flinched and took a step away from him, sensing his anger. Texan remained quite. At moments like this, going against his brother was one of the biggest mistakes one could ever do in their lives. "Three days in the pit," Travas said, "if you shall not see things my way soon. I will be forced to enlighten you. I have come up with a way to to bring forth our days of darkness upon Armensia and you are running around on foolish endeavours to do nothing but annihilate artras that you know nothing about. We have only seen five of them and you think you can take them on by yourself. Get him out of my sight."

And with that the elves hauled Texan out of the throne room and to the place they had name the Pit. The Pit was a deep hole made bottomless by magic. Once someone was in it they could only be brought out by someone outside it. And when inside it, one was made to see their worst horrors while at the same time they continuously plummeted downwards. It was also meant to make one obey an instruction without fail once he was out of it.

"Why don't you just listen to your brother?" one of the elves asked and the others looked at him with glares that said, 'Do you have a death wish.' Texan only remained silent until they brought him to the room that housed the pit and pushed him in through the entrance. Travas had purposely made the pit to discipline Texan and the worst part was that after all these centuries, he was not yet used to it.

….........................

Gary arrived at school slightly later than usual although with the right amount of time to get to his class. He had known for a while that his brother could control time but he had no idea that he was that good at it.

'So what took you so long?' A girls voice spoke in his mind. Gary had befriended a strange new girl at the beginning of the term and not before long the two of them had found out that they were artras and had been working on their magic for a while under the supervision of course.

Their relationship had grown rapidly that currently it was almost as if they were dating, much as they wanted it to be that way, none of them had shown signs of taking it further.

'My brother was not himself today,' he replied, 'he wasted almost a full hour with us waiting for him.' He explained as he settled into his seat and got ready for his biology class.

'Huh. Thats not right. How was he acting?' She asked

'Well, he was drowsy and he kept zoning out,' he explained. At this point the teacher got into class and everyone got seated for the lesson.

'Ciara was a bit jumpy today and a lot less conversational,' she said somewhat excited, 'Oh and by the way, she did not spend the night at home.'

'Where could she have been?'

'With Kevin silly. Can't you see there is a connection between the two of them?' She squealed through their telepathic link which wasn't a good idea since that was one way to guarantee a headache.

'No, I do not see a relationship between them,' he said bluntly rubbing his forehead to in an effort to soothe the pain from her squealing.

'Ugh. Boys can be so blind. Anyway it was of recent when I found her diary open and she was writing about him. I know it is creepy but I got too curious. It is so romantic,' she explained.

'See that is why boys don't keep diaries,' Gary bragged, 'but if what you are saying is true then what happened between them?'

'That is also obvious. My sister flipped out.,' Kevin was trying to figure out why she did that and ended up in that situation. 'I am under the impression he will even have trouble casting spell,' she explained. As if on queue, the teacher's voice began glitching. Gary paid attention and found that it was time that was freezing and unfreezing. And from the looks of it, the spell was weak since it wasn't freezing him with it.

'I guess that would be my brother, wouldn't it?' Gary asked to confirm his suspicions,

'Yes. It would. He's the only master of time we know,' he replied.

'Umm, Claire, is this really how heart break is supposed to affect people,' I asked.

She took her time before she answered the question, 'Not for normal people, but for artras, it can be worse. Our powers rely on our mental and emotional state a lot.'

Her revelation got my mind racing. I could not over look the fact that this could apply to the two of us. I was highly hoping it didn't. Ever since my brother found out about being an artra, he had only been going through pain while the rest of us had just been enjoying the beauty of magic. It made me wonder. Were we all on some ticking clock. Were we eventually going to land in situations that would cause great pain like what my brother had been through.

Claire and I had been training together and we weren't allowed to reveal ourselves to the rest of the artras for many reasons that we were still also not allowed to know. So Claire and I had resorted to just watching the artras in their adventures while we trained hard. Someday we would join them and we had to be ready for when that day came.