The Cobra's Cage: Chpt. 5

As I was writing this chapter, I was debating whether to change the title to "The Cobra's Cage" or keep it. Any ideas?

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Asiva

My hand lingered over the doorknob. Phoenix Korsar. Just the thought of his smile: his cheeks creasing, his green eyes dappled with light, like leaves with raindrops. I'd lived in misery during the mission. I saw him in the trees and the rocs we were assigned to fight. And it was this that prevented me from killing them.

I yearned to tell him how much he meant to me. As a friend. I couldn't suggest anything further; it was the loss of his girlfriend that tightened our bonds. How could I repay his consoling me? He had steered me out the darkness, and I--I had only left him, at the weakest he'd ever been. Dr. Blythe told me he had died for a moment on that operating table. His body just couldn't withstand...it. I didn't know what "it" was. I was just glad it released him.

No, glad was an understatement. As soon as I'd returned, I'd hastened to the hospital wing, but he wasn't there. The fear that ensued...was keener than a knife blade. Despite battling rocs, slaughtering drakon simulations, suffering a poisonous cobra bite.

The cobras were my first year, part of the pre-exams. They'd been unleashed in the Training Room. I still had nightmares about them, about being locked in their cages. Some deep-rooted fear seemed to be associated; I couldn't quite place it. No one in Candon remembered anything prior to their arrival on campus, and Candon was desperate to maintain that fact. No mirrors or reflecting surfaces could be located anywhere within campus borders. Yet every agent knew what a mirror was, like they'd been common appearances in our pasts.

That was another fear. No one else was the slightest bit suspicious. Even Phoenix couldn't remember some of our ponderings. So how could I trust... my memory bank? How could I know it hadn't been robbed? Even the ones of the mission kept shattering, shifting, shuffling like a deck of cards.

But Phoenix's death surpassed it. Phoenix was like kin.

Little did I know...one day those two fears would collide.

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I could feel magic throbbing against my heart. I'd summoned it without knowing. Silver light shrouded my fingertips, as tranquil as moonshine, as unearthly as lightning.

My power was manipulating states of matter. It strengthened by the month. I didn't know a person who wasn't envious of it, except for Phoenix. Phoenix was quite proud of his; I didn't see what use it was, though. It only provided him energy and sight. As of the present, I was limited to fluids and solids, and I could only convert one object at a time. I could freeze someone's blood, but not their entire anatomy.

My light dimmed as I poured energy into it. The air occupying the door lock crystallized, assuming the contour of a key. I curled my fingers around it and jerked, so that the lock clicked and the door swung.

I'd never entered Phoenix's dorm. It was small, but that was in comparison to my dorm, which I'd shared with Scarlett. A frazzled carpet draped the floor, and shabby drapes carpeted the window panes. The walls were a cold, naked white, decorated only with suit hooks.

I crossed over to the window. It overlooked Candon's labyrinthine streets. They reflected its interior, and my mind, I couldn't help thinking. Barely broad enough for a crowd to squeeze by.

The sun was setting in the distance. A fusion of golds and silvers and scarlets. Mocking me. The gold reflected a phoenix's plumage, the silver my hair, and the scarlet... Scarlett. The three of us could never be that way. The three of us could never allow one to drag down the rest.

But... no. The silver remained. It was made immortal by the moon. And then the sun would rise again, and the gold would overtake the silver. I was most powerful in the night. Phoenix told me that a sunbeam's essence was silver, but that didn't correspond with my theory.

Superstition was the drawback of philosophy. I saw omens everywhere, and they were so obvious, I couldn't help but believe in them.

The cobras. My dreams about being locked in a cage. Was the bite really that traumatic an experience, or was my mind attempting to tell me something: that the Candon campus was the cage, the borders the bars? I was yet to figure out the cobra. Maybe me? Fed into obeisance? My friends the bars?

All this flashed through my head as I gazed through the window.

I stood there for quite a while, feet planted to the carpet, thoughts roaming the clouds. Then my leg muscles began to ache, so I sunk into a chair. It was stiff, straight-backed--perfect for thinking.

A soft creak alerted me to his presence. Warmth surged through my soul, melting my emotions, my thoughts. It almost seemed too good to be true that he was here--after all this time, standing beside me, heart beating sound.

I wrenched my lips apart, ready to call his name. But he hadn't noticed. His face was tinged gray, his features sagging.

He fingered his zipper. I hastily cleared my throat. "Phoenix." But he was already spinning round, crying, "Who's there?" One hand fled to his left pocket.

"That's the wrong pocket."

"What do you mean, it's the wrong pocket?" He sounded weary, but he moved with the agility of a soldier. I realized he was trying to find me. So I slid out of the shadows, laughing, "I'm over here, you dope."

I didn't know that he'd take such offense to "dope." He asked me what the hell I was doing in his dorm. Accused me of being his only friend. I could feel the rage pouring from his lips in rivers. At last, when he ignored my offer to recount my mission, I exited. Tears glazed my eyes. I tried to tell myself, so what? He hadn't missed me as much as I missed him. But the tears still flowed.