Stolen Hearts; Chapter Twenty

Blackness - Navy - Orange - Light. Cala blinked, eyes scrunched, brain blurred like smudged text running off the page, colors washed in front of her eyes. One figure - Two - Four - More in the background, big and small.
"She awake?" slurred words from the end of a tunnel.
Back burns - Tummy muscles pull - Nothing moves, eyes roll - Blackness.
*
Noise - Murmured words - Navy universe, eyes won’t open.
"She’s got to wake up," hissed "…two days left"
Back burns.
"Ruffelm’s going to leave," bitterly said.
"Only Five hundred of us left to fight," muttered.
Tummy muscles pull - Body shifts - Groan - Startled grunts - eyes roll into… - Blackness.
*
Blackness - Whispers - By my hand, steam breath.
Cala.
Blackness - Warmth on cheek.
Cala, I’m here.
In my head - Face - Voice - No name.
Its been a whole day. You need to come back. I’m here. I’m here.
Fading whispers - Fading desperately.
Cala, I need you… I lo-
Words lost - Blackness clamps - Choked.
Blackness - Navy - Orange - Body spasms, rigid as spine, soft as putty - Lost to Navy - Blackness.

Sudden orange - Electric - Light, too bright. Something screams. Cold, hard reality, eyes scrunched closed to the sharpness of the noise with too much clarity. Morning breeze floats softly across her left cheek, damp sheets beneath racing pulsing body.
"Cala?"
Her eyes open slowly and fearfully to the face of Luke Freeman.

Cala took fifteen minuets before she could do anything more than breathe. Luke left her to calm down but no matter how silently he managed to constrict himself her heart rate pounded like war drums. He flinched at nothing.

Cala shivered and watched in horror as her skin seemed to visibly pale under her gaze, the veins on the back of her hands rippled royal blue. Searchingly she looked up to Luke and gasped, unable to speak the word help. He was by her side in an instant, muttering the modified words of Latin instead of Greek throughout his spells.

Cala’s heart rate slowed but nothing had an affect on her skin, it turned slowly into a bruised inked covering as if the navy in her veins were spreading underneath her whole body. She rumbled the air between her lungs in pain and the tattoo across her back scorched silver, striking suddenly. She moaned, but it was over.

Her tattoo faded back to black, the clouds across her skin retreated. Luke’s eyes were moon-drunk wide as he stared at Cala in silent premeditated apology. He didn’t retreat but Cala saw the fear in his face, his fingers clamped shut stretching the skin taunt across his knuckles as if the blood were on his own hands and he sought to hide it.

"Are you ok?" He asked slowly, just as cautious as Cala felt.
She nodded in response, took one last look at her hands, gulped and asked the scary question.

"How long till the attack?"
"Two days," there was no hesitation, and Luke blushed. Cala smiled as kindly as she could.

"Don’t worry Luke, I’m sure that’s on everyone’s minds, you don’t need to waste time fussing over me. I’ll be fit to fight,"
Luke swallowed, panicked as Cala tried to swing her legs out of the bed. Swiftly he tucked them back under the sheets, static shock snapped from his fingers through her cotton pyjama bottoms.

"Sorry," he muttered "But we got told to make sure you stayed in the bed till Ruffelm came to check on you,"
"Why haven’t you called him yet?" Cala scowled, leaning back into her pillow, the sheets were damp with beads of sweat. She muttered a curse and the sheets crunched into cleanliness.
"I just did,"

Cala looked up sharply, the fuzziness in her bleary mind wearing thin revealing her usual edginess.

"Oh," surprised she’d missed it.

Luke sat back down on the couch by the side of her bed. He seemed to be both looking at her with desperate hunger and not looking at her at all but mourning the thought of something else.

"You’re going to fight aren’t you?" he stabbed suddenly, easily.
"Yeah," Cala rested her eyes, sighed into the comfort of the pillow. Luke was so easy to be around, there was a gentle numbness about him Cala had never experienced, it was powerfully distant.

"I heard you usually fight centre battlefield,"
Cala nodded and smiled with her eyes still sedately calm.
"Yeah that’s right. That’s where I’ll fight,"

"Up front?"
A small frown creased her brow.
"No, I think I’ll stay in the back, I’d be more effective en mass in long range than close combat,"

"Oh," Luke twitched. "But you’ll be in front of the shields wont you? Just in case they need your help to hold them up or if those at the front line suddenly fall?"
Cala’s brow frowned deeper.

"Wont you?" Luke urged, he sounded concerned. Cala thought of all the pupils of this school left to fight because presumably a lot of them had nowhere else to go and then of them falling on the front line while she was protected behind shields.

The frown creasing her otherwise peaceful countenance was smoothly ironed out.
"You’re right, I’ll be in front of the shields, that’s where I’d be most effective and we’ll need all the help we can get,"
Luke sighed, reassured.

"I’m sure you will," He stood up slowly and turned to leave.
"Luke, you’re going to fight as well aren’t you?" Cala opened her eyes to see Luke already by the door. He turned back and smiled earnestly.

"I give you my word Regina. I will fight," Luke smiled and slid out of the room leaving Cala in peace.
*
She lay for a few hours, realising she’d woken at four in the morning. Cala thought of waking up to Luke and thought warmly of them all taking shifts to wait until she awoke but there was a deep uneasiness as three hours later she’d had no other visitors. Of course no one would come now that Luke had watched her wake but Cala found herself wanting company.

Ruffelm hadn’t turned up yet either, impatient of waiting Cala swung her legs out of bed, vaguely remembering the war drums and her pulsing tattoo she made her way over to the curtained window which overlooked the canyon.

Drawing back the curtains she stared out tensely towards the Black Nation, feeling nothing but a hollow cavern where the strain of ties should be Cala blanked before a gush of horror flooded into that cavern.

Banished!

She gasped and blanched, staggering and reaching out for a grip she caught the wall by the curtains. Still feeling nothing, a clinical cut, no traces left behind. Xandu had officially severed her ties to her mothering nation. She stooped hunched and panting against the wall letting the minutes spin around her mind for longer than she cared to count.

Feeling like a young girl in an elevator which had fallen with a sickening suddenness she steadied her self slowly. Raising her head she gulped to look out at a nation she no longer held a claim to.

A face stared back at her in the window’s reflection. With eyes like hoary fire, one notch too close to an untamed dog.
"I didn’t know you’d woken up,"

Cala turned with her face too open and accepting to frown at his comment.
"Luke-" she started.

"I didn’t think you’d wake up," Simon rushed forward and just like that Cala was in his arms. Warm, safe and if Cala was honest, entirely thrilled. He stroked her hair and she nuzzled further into his chest, letting the pain of banishment spill out of her body in a series of shivers.

Simon held on tighter each time, reminding her of his presence and not once would he lessen his hold. Cala felt his concern etch deep into her and she looked up to see tears bounding down his cheeks only to be caught and cupped by a smile to put the sun to shame.

Slowly, her face absorbed the glow and she smiled back, forgetting whatever she had been about to say. Simon blinked to stop the tears and smiled again with renewed energy like a newborn pup. He tugged her in so much Cala was lifted off her feet onto her toes. Her eyes flickered and landed on his lips.
He caught the softness in her gaze and brought one hand gently up to wipe the fleeting strands of stay bangs off of her face. Cala felt a crack deep in her chest but it was warm like being flooded in strawberry chocolate and wrapped in fluffed blankets.

Before she had a second though Simons lips brushed against her and the breath she had unknowably been holding surged out as if there was no need for oxygen when Simon was on her lips. Soft, warm, smooth and then gone.

Cala blinked as the oxygen came back in a gulp and Simon drew back above her. Her eyes flew open and immediately searched but her skin told her Simon was still there, arms secure about her waist and her eyes soon confirmed with the image of a relaxed jaw and eyes that breathed secrets.

"I love you,"

Simple - out there - wolf exposed at the throat, at the heart even. Cala flinched in his arms but out of a joy she hadn’t felt for a long time. Simons words whispered through her head long after he withdrew his arms at the sudden bang of wooden doors flying open to hit stone.

She stood there with a distant smile lingering at the corners of her mouth, a mirror of Simons also. However the new addition had other topics in mind.
*
"Ruffelm," Simon nodded once, too sharp. Cala noticed.
The old man spared him a cursory nod in return but strode straight up to the target, Cala. Simon slid into place protectively beside her.

"You’re awake," Ruffelm said gruffly.
"Obviously," Cala cocked her head to one side.

Ruffelm grunted. "White Nation wants you in prison now the Black Nation’s marching. They’re heading here,"
Cala shrugged as Simon growled silently beside her she felt him bristle.

"Everyone’s left except for you and myself," Ruffelm sighed and cast another fleeting look over Simon "Everyone with enough sense to know a tactic retreat is sensible anyway,"

Ruffelm returned his blue eyes back to her own. Cala looked at her Grandfather and felt no bond remaining, in fact looking back she realized there never really was a bond between them, only a game. He was just another man on the street to her and she had no time for such strangers.

"I never had much regard for sense," Cala replied evenly.
Simon shifted proudly beside her and she saw a smirk tug at the edges of his mouth, it wasn’t entirely absent of malice.
"You’ll fight for a nation that hates you?" Ruffelm raised an eyebrow curiously.

"I’ll fight against any nation in general," Cala held his gaze without hostility only honesty.
Ruffelm frowned but needless to say Cala held no real importance to him, merely an interest from time to time and her time was up, he muttered "So be it," and with a half hearted smile turned from the pair stood defiantly together to leave the school, perhaps forever.

As the final clip of his shoes died away Simon turned with a boyish grin and a spark in his eye.
"Come on," He bounded to the door "The schools deserted except for those brave enough to fight. They’ll be a lot more confident with you storming about as per usual,"

Simon winked, grabbed her by the hands and in a flush, her world span literally as colors washed away and new, richer, darker russet colors formed around her. In an instant she found herself on the balcony above the great hall. She looked down on a hoard of teenagers, eager, earnest in their war lust as their faces rose to the sound of Simon’s teleportation.

Faces burned and eyes widened as they saw a healthy, living, powerful Cala Hunt – a War Princess, on their side, in their fight.
*
Cala stared down in wonderment. So much had been changed in just one and a half days, the school’s population had been drastically sliced but it was more buzzing and alive than Cala could ever have thought. People were working, physically hammering weapons, sharpening blades, reinforcing with energy, stitching battle suits and training. Not even in the Black Nation had soldiers training been this intense.

She soon noticed the majority of people remaining were her age and older with only a few from the lower years and it put her mind a little more at ease.

The whole of the hall had been shifted, tables pushed to one side and stacked with equipment, training fields set up with energy barriers along the opposite side of the room, cracks already appearing in the shield walls containing the fighters. War banners of red hung from the ceiling and furnaces and anvils roared and clanged at the far end of the hall as metal was forged.

But the five hundred pupils all stopped to stand and stare as Simon stepped forward Cala in tow. Some sniggered realizing already what others would soon come to see but the majority held still, holding their breaths tightly, waiting on something Cala realized Simon was about to do.

Slowly he unsheathed a sword strapped to his waist and raised it in all its glory out over the army. A dark blue katana sword with a ravenous emerald engorged in the pommel, tiny black engravings ran the length of the blade indistinguishably.
Expecting him to shout Cala was thrown of guard as he said quite simply.

"She fights,"
The uproar that followed however did not fail to make Cala jump and the hall filled with roars which no amount of metal melting fire furnace in the hall could begin to compete with.

I'm sorry it took so long ): I'll do my best to get the next one out a lotttt faster. Thanks for waiting to everyone who has, and I will be continuing this to the end I promise! I intend it to be done by either Christmas or new year so :) please keep reading.

Love Lullabyes xxxxx