17 Chapter Seventeen

Rrring. The bell for the last lesson to end went. 'I need all the current available artras to meet me at the back of the library immediately.' Ciara's voice echoed through my mind. 'Wonderful, but why is she being so formal, she almost sounds like a principal,' I thought.

'Johnson,' she yelled in my mind which told me she heard me. I blocked her out of my mind as I had recently learned that I could do. I will have to deal with the alpha's wrath later. I was probably going to miss football practice today. I started making my way for Bergstrom's room so that I could fill him in. This day was too full of bad news. Hopefully, he could take that into consideration when formulating my training.

"Hey, sir," I said knocking at his door and letting myself in as some students left his class. I passed by them and waited till the students were out of earshot. "You wouldn't believe the day I had,"I started.

"I'm guessing it's one where you still get to go play football," he joked. The professor had stopped being gloomy all the time and was starting to have a warm feeling for him.

"This day is so long I might even miss football practice," I chuckled nervously.

"What? Why?" The professor asked now becoming serious. I began my story after making him promise not to interrupt me. I told him about Texan's visit. Then I told him about my incident with Jacob and finally Ciara's orders for us to meet her in the library.

"When you said you had a long day, I could not have seen this coming," he said, " and if I'm right then your day has just begun." This took me by surprise. What did he mean by that? No, I have no time to ask that. "You better get to the library. Ciara will be very angry with you for being late." Bergstrom warned and as if on queue Ciara's voice boomed in my mind.

'Johnson, where are you?' She sounded very pissed but I still had one question to ask. I stopped time and unfroze Bergstrom.

"Sir, I have one more question," I said and he nodded signalling that I go ahead and ask. "Sir, Ciara said the barrier between the two worlds that the artras reinforce each time was supposed to be impenetrable. Texan wasn't supposed to be able to get here."

This question seemed to hit a nerve and the professor's face took on a sad expression. "Kevin, have a sit," he said sadly. We took our seats and I waited for him to muster the courage he needed to tell the story. "Our generation of artras was the one that came closest," he paused, tears welling up in his eyes, came closest to being wiped out. And it was my fault," he said. "When our Alpha killed the Elder dragon Ellimir, the Siege's power or yet my power was greatly reduced. From that point on we could barely hold our own against the Dark mages. We were forced to go on the defensive. Each time we went to Armensia and got attacked, we were heavily overwhelmed and would always barely escape with our lives. It was hopeless.

None of us wanted to blame Dave for what he did. He had apologized, but," he paused sniffling, "The damage was already done. We drifted apart and the bond we shared as artras started fading. We knew what we had to do. We came together and reinforced the barrier with the magic power we could summon at that time, but as you can already guess it wasn't much considering we had been significantly weakened. So yeah, there are bound to be breaches and weaknesses in the barrier this time around."

"I'm so sorry, sir," was all I was able to say. It hadn't occurred to me just how bad that incident had affected them.

"Never let the artras fight, Kevin," he said, "it will weaken you and all will be lost. There has never been a generation in more danger at the beginning than yours. You have to stick together no matter what," he told me.

My conversation with Bergstrom left me with quite a bit to think about that I barely noticed when I had arrived in the library. "Someone took his time. For someone who wasn't lying, you are pretty calm. You should have been the first one here," Jacob was the one who gave me the scolding this time though I doubt it was really wise considering earlier I almost had his head(figuratively speaking). 'You should stick together no matter what,' Bergstrom's words echoed through my mind. I was going to have to find another way to settle my issues with Jacob before it got too far.

"I had an assignment to hand into Bergstrom and he held me back so that he could if I got everything right. Obviously," I said shrugging. "Jacob, you know I'm not one for violence. You must understand. To be honest I have only felt as helpless as I was when Texan came once in my life." I told him causing his eyes to widen in shock. My friends all knew about the dreadful day I lost my cousin. My cousin. My cousin. 'He was killed by someone who kept telling him to use magic. The man had inhuman strength....' I was beginning to hyperventilate but shut my eyes and focused on my breathing. 'No, not now. I'll think about that later.'

Deep down, something clicked, the horrible feeling at the back of my mind was connected to my cousin's murder. A tear flowed down my cheek. "You okay, Kevin," Kendall asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Yes. I am," I said wiping away all signs of the depressing thoughts going through my mind.

"Let's go, Ciara," Jacob said his face serious before softening his expression to look at me. "I'm sorry for what I said earlier," he said apologetically as Ciara opened up the portal to Armensia. She had kept quiet the whole time. My guess was that she must have not wanted to butt into what she had no idea about. With a wave of her hand, she beckoned us to go through first.

Ciara's portal opened up at the colossal gate that was the entrance of the Artarak, the Artra mansion (more like a castle if you ask me). She had brought us here to take through an intense series of training. None of us (mainly Kendall and I) thought this training was going to be any hard. Luckily she wasn't forcing us to learn new magic. She had briefed us on the walk to the castle entrance. We were going to fight her one-on-one each then two-on-one and finally three-on one. We all bought she was joking.

I took the time to take in the architecture and designs that were used in this amazing castle. The Artarak's halls had been designed exquisitely with too much detail in each design. Even surfaces that had been meant to simply look rough had an order in the way they were made. The colours of the walls could change to better suit an occasion happening in the castle at the moment. And right now they were completely grey with three lines that ran along with them and flashed yellow signals in the direction of the battle-room. It looked like a barracks if you asked me. Well, quite fitting for such a training session if I say so myself.

We walked quietly through the halls. "Welcome back, Artras," I take it back, we almost walked through quietly. Jeremy, the magical artificial intelligence that ran the castle systems. It was quite neat as you could hear it from any part of the castle as though it too had a body of its own to move around. "Jeremy," Ciara called.

"Yes, Alpha Ciara."

"Prepare the battle-room. Layout 5," she said. 'Wait she had this all planned out.'

"Ummm, Ciara."

"No backing out," she said with a hint of finality in her voice. 'We are screwed.' "And Johnson."

"Yeah," I replied faking fear.

"You're not off the hook for insulting me," she said causing everyone to gasp including Jeremy. 'Okay why does an artificial intelligence even need to gasp,' I thought.