You know in most stories people are summoned to another word through physics breaking anomalies, portals, or trucks right? Well my and my friend, who is a girl by the way, didn’t get that specialty…well there was a portal, but it wasn’t a good thing. Instead of going to a world that treats summoned peoples like they are hero's, people that are gonna save their world from some sort of devastating thing, no one was there to greet up, to help us. Not even that the gods of this world cared about us and the people that were supposed to be there for us came late, and were not friendly.
I was walking to my school one day, just a normal day, it was hard to tell the time as there was no visible sun anymore, and clocks…well clocks were just torn apart and used for parts by us lower peoples. I was hoping my friend wasn’t staying behind like she normally did, she was so much better than me: smarter, healthier, energetic, and she’d even gotten offers from the Sky Academies! But she turned them down, I never knew why, and every time I asked she changed the subject.
Anyways she was there, again, waiting for me, and that leads us to the present.
"Hey Jo!" I looked back to see a blond haired, green-eyed girl of sixteen running towards me. I always found it amazing that she was able to keep her hair so clean, and her eyes always shone so brightly. Well at least only around me, I never actually knew what she acted like when she wasn't around me. Her eyes though, they were something else. Having green eyes was a symbol of higher birth in itself because it meant that your body had as little defects as possible, really any other color other than Brown or Dirty Blue was a sign of a healthier life and of a better future.
"Hey Charm." I said stopping and turning to face her on the path I usually took to school. It was the year 2335, most parents were unable to provide for their children after the age of five and after eleven more years of being on the street alone I eventually got a job, a place to call home, and got into a school decent enough to make friends and not have to worry about being stabbed in the back by a rival in every dark corner or alleyway.
"So how is life going?" She asked. It was the usual small talk that started when she joined me on the way to school. Even though she lived on the other side of the block, and had no real reason to leave early just to walk around the block just to meet me on the way to school, she still id so, and has done so since the age of five. I thought that it was creepy that she cared so much at first, so I often changed my path to avoid her, but eventually she cut off every route I took and I found to like her presence, just having her around at a time I didn't want to be bothered helped my mood.
"Good!" I said genuinely, "I finally got the house paid off and the new washer installed from the stacks, so I don't need to wash my own dishes much anymore, even if it needs a few better parts. "
"You know I could always come over and help you." She always offered this, among other kinds of odd offers. I had a vague idea why but didn't want to push my luck, especially with how thin it was already with her seeming like someone important. Her Cleanliness wasn't something that was a common thing around here, and I've been lucky enough to find useful hygiene products every now and then than most.
"No it's fine, I haven't broken or thrown out any recently. And even if I do they are pretty easy to find in the scrap-yards around here." I said pretending to not hear her sigh as we walked on towards school. It was times like these where I wished I could look to the skies above and maybe see the stars, or maybe the satellites we've gathered over the centuries. Sadly though, there was no point in looking up anymore, as there was nothing to see past all of the floating condos and smog-filled skies. Dear Celeste, I wished I could just leave this place.
I didn't realize that that was exactly what was going to be happening in a few minutes.
"You can't keep on sneaking into that place." She growled at me and I shrugged holding up the pistol that I had also found in the scrap-yard and figured out how to fix and sort of fight with, sadly there weren't really that many bullets that I could steal from the low-level stores, nor the floating ones that came down every so often. "And you also can't keep on jutting around with a fire-arm like that. You're gonna either get killed or found by The Insurrection, questioned, and then killed."
I shrugged again and stuffed the gun in my back waistband and continued to walk forwards with my arms raised gripping the back of my head. "I'm pretty sure that no one's gonna mess with me when they see it, even if there's no way for me to actually use it. And if they do try to take I have plenty of other ways that I can get it back." I grinned and she sighed, not defeated but not pressing me about it further.
"Okay fine," She harrumphed crossing her arms for a moment to walk beside me in silence, and then she raised a hand up and scratched her left ear.
"What's wrong?" I asked but she just hummed at me in disinterest. I just looked sideways at her until she crumbled.
"Stop boring those Onyx eyes into my head." She shuddered but I continued to stare, "I don't like how they stare into my soul."
"Then stop hiding things." I said and she sighed, but didn't say anything
I smirked and looked away anyways, I didn't want to ruin our friendship by forcing things out of her, and the school was getting into view now so our happy moments were about to be over.
It's a broken black bricked building with several crumbling paths making it look like an ancient place that should crumble at any moment, and the inside wasn't any better. Several of the windows were broken, and the rest were sagging or yellowed, and all the tables and chairs were barely stable enough for holding anyone's weight. The teachers didn't really teach anything either, really it was just sit down, let me count how many are still alive, and then do their own thing for the rest of the day. Yes the day, our entire day, for five days a week, were school. From twelve to almost twenty hours of just doing either whatever you wanted: sleeping, fine; showing up for count and then leaving right after, fine; showing off weapons and drugs that they either found or made, fine. It was bad, and pretty much the only thing that wasn't allowed was sexual intercourse...and killing on school-grounds.
"I'm sick of living here." Charm growled, "I want to go live in the sky, living in those floating houses with a dog that can fly and walk on air. I want a bird made of metal and a family to take care of every day. I want to leave!" Charm roared and I raised an eyebrow at her. What was with the sudden outburst?
"Well, maybe after this last month in this shipwreck of a place we call 'school', just maybe we'll have something to look forward to in the future." I said patting her shoulder as we stepped past the gates and onto the school-grounds. Always the last two students to appear for the day, and while I haven't been scolded for it anymore, Charm has had a talking to every now and then. The gates behind us closed as we stepped into the school's boundaries and suddenly the air itself shuddered. Something was wrong and it made me stop and look around cautiously, even Charm was holding her book tightly looking around confused.
"I'm guessing you felt that too?" I asked and she nodded still looking around as I lead us to the front of the school. Suddenly the ground itself gave way to a large column of light. I could feel Charm suddenly take my hand, without dropping her book surprisingly as the light surrounded us entirely. I also gripped her hand tightly as it continued to impede on my vision, and then it stopped and a different kind of light came from above.
Charm and I recovered at the exact same time to see something that we both thought we'd never see in either of our life-times: There was a full blue sky above us, with a large yellow sun and the shadows of three moons lighting up the sky. The next thing was the feeling of grass, wait, where did my shoes go, and my gun is also gone! I worked hard on that!
I huffed, they weren't important anymore anyways. I looked down and saw that we've been transported in a wide expanse of green, with large grey barked, green leaved trees lining the distance, tall enough to where they just barely peaked over the strange hill that we had ended up on.
"Where are we?" Charm breathed in amazement. I had no answer; I couldn't answer. My senses were too overloaded by the vast natural beauty around us, beauty that was only seen in pictures and old books that I didn't know what to make of at the time. Suddenly there were screams coming from behind us, and a large crash as one of the lower floor's intact windows was broken open. A body having been flung through it, all twisted and half gone. Our attention was brought to a large black blob that was seeping out of the windows and onto the body that had been thrown from the building.
"What is that?" Charm said, now terrified and I watched as the surface of the black blob touched the body laying on the grass quickly turning it into more black mass.
"I don't know but I don't plan on staying to see if it has a way of bringing us to it." I said turning and sweeping Charm off of the ground. Carrying her towards the closest part of the forest in-front of us before stopping halfway down the hill. Forests were usually places that had a lot of bad things in them in books and movies. Things that I stole chances at seeing when sneaking onto some low floating theaters to watch whatever I could before being ejected from the platform for trespassing.
"W-why are you stopping?" Charm asked in my arms looking as far away from my face as seemingly possible.
"I don't feel like going into a forest is a good idea at the moment." I said and looked around for a close place to hide and maybe see if anyone else escaped the building. To my luck there was a small hole in the side of one of the hills that surrounded the sides of our area and with nothing else around I dashed towards it. I let Charm down so that she could crawl into the hole first, and then I went in feet first and turned around to watch.
The next few minutes the many choruses of cut off screams and yells of rage sounded. People that I assumed were trying to fight back against the blobs of black mass that had infested the school. One person had gotten onto the roof of the school and seemed to be stuck there, at least, that was until the roof caved in and the entire building collapsed sending them into the center of the black mass. The building collapsed on itself and everything inside that I'd hoped still had a chance of survival was covered in a dust-cloud of rubble and black mass.
The dust took it's sweet time dissipating but the wind finally overcame it and blew the last of it away. The black blob that had been the teachers and students of the school was the size of the school itself and writhing. Sometimes a hand or arm would appear: mangled and fleshy while the occupant found for their freedom, but to no avail as they were soon sucked back in. Once under the full force of the sun, no other cover from the rays of light, the black blob seemed to shrink and evaporate into particles that vanished soon after entering the air. Eventually nothing was left of the black blob, even the grass seemed to suck some of the particles from around it to grow back and replace the area that the school had taken up.
We stayed in the little cave for a long time not daring to move a muscle, and I was just about to go out when a section of the mountain to our left was deleted from existence and a large platoon of men and women in white and gray armor that seemed to glow under the light of the moons walked through the new chasm.
The leader stopped at the edge of the area our school had been and looked around for a moment.
"What do we do?" Charm asked quietly and I put a hand on her shoulder to hold her back.
"Nothing. We let them look around and leave, and then we can follow after them." I said and she looked at me like I was crazy, "Look this is obviously not a nice place and the things that have happened don't make any sense. There's also the fact that we don't know if we are actually dead as well, if the black blob is going to come back, nor if they even speak our language. So we are going to stay here, and hopefully we aren't spotted because I do not like the idea of being seen by whoever they are. Especially since they weren't here when we were brought here, and we don't actually know if they are hostile of friendly."
I watched as the leader looked around for a moment and I scooted us further back in the hole to keep out of sight but as I tugged Charm back with me she stopped me.
"Something's caught in my clothes." She said and I grumbled. Of course that had to happen now, just as the potential enemies were looking around for us. I reached my hand over her and patted the area next to her to see what it could be, and found something had gone through a hole in the back of her pants and was caught on the bottom of her shirt. I moved over her to see what it was after getting her shirt unstuck and saw that there was just a stick in the ground. The bottom was hidden in the dirt but it looked like I could pull it out, but that turned out to be a mistake.
As soon as I pulled it through her pants the dirt shifting in the process and revealing a spiked top that extended turning it into a vertical pole that seemed to hit something on the ceiling and click. Not soon after the ground underneath us gave way and we were quickly sliding down into darkness. I looked up to see if we were going to be able to get back out, but the light was cut off and the slide opened up into a sort of cave, then the tunnel itself closed itself off as soon as Charm's long brown hair passed it's threshold.
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