Reality Chapter 5

I have decided to..." But before Berry could finish her sentence, someone started pounding on the door of my house. I checked who it was from the window and saw a tall, thin creature banging on our front door. He looked like he was made of sticks and his height was twice mine. His skin was grey and he had only one eye, which was red as blood.

"A Hollow," said Scylla and I turned around to see her shocked face behind me.

"What do we do?" Hanna said, panic creeping into her caramel coloured eyes.

"We leave," the stranger said, getting to his feet. "Hanna and Berry, you have to choose now. If yes, you come with us, if no, we drop you home."

"I'll come," said Hanna.

"Me too," said Berry and I felt as if a huge knot in my stomach had been untied.

"We need to get out of this house first. Quick, everyone, go to your rooms and pack enough clothes to last you a few weeks and anything else you will need. We don't know when we can come back. I will try to cast a magic barrier."

''I will help you," my dad said.

"Me too," said my uncle, rising to his feet.

"What about us?" Hanna said, "Our clothes aren't even here."

"We will ask your parents to meet us at the location, they can bring your stuff." My mom said, and we all darted to our rooms, except Hanna, Berry, the stranger, my dad and uncle. The three men snapped their fingers and a wand appeared in each of their hands as they started saying an incantation together.

Scylla hadn't unpacked and so she just picked up the bags she had brought from her house. I grabbed my bag and stuffed all the clothes I could fit. I zipped it and stood up. I took my school bag and emptied it of all the books. I put my laptop in it and its charger. I also added the emergency kit which had medicines for my allergies and hygiene products.

I looked around my room, wondering if I would ever actually come back. I know the stranger said that we would be coming back eventually, even though he couldn't be sure when. But he had uncertainty in his voice as he said it, and I had a feeling we wouldn't come back. No one else had seemed to notice this but me. I glanced at the picture covered wall and I couldn't help but think about the people I might actually never see again. I just stood there for a few seconds, staring at the wall and my normal life that seemed so far away now. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"I know how you feel," Scylla said before gently squeezing my shoulder. She must have felt the same before she had arrived at my house. Now I wished I had been there for her. I have my friends and twin sister with me now, she had had none. I gave her a half-hearted smile before I pulled out all my yearbooks from the bookcase. I removed all the pictures from the wall, left them in one of the yearbooks and added them to one of my bags. I picked up my earplugs and phone and pocketed them.

Then, I rummaged through my closet and brought out the book, goblet, dagger and vase that had mysteriously appeared in my room.

"You got that too?" Said Scylla, pointing at the book, completely surprised.

"You mean ..." I said as I added them to my bag. She nodded.

"I got a book, similar to yours, a crown, a map and a traditional dress." She said and I noticed we got the same number of objects.

"Do you have them now?"

"Yes, they are in my bag."

"Can you show them to me later?"

"Okay."

Scylla exited and I looked around one last time before gathering up enough courage to walk out the door. But before I closed the door, I remembered something.

“Forgot something,” I told Scylla and ran back inside. I pulled out the heart-shaped locket I had got for Christmas.

Our class had played secret Santa which Hanna and Berry had organised. A week later I found out that they had made sure my crush, Michael Black got my name and I got his. The locket meant a lot, considering the fact that I may never meet him under normal circumstances again. I wore it and exited the room, locking the door behind me. I don't know why I locked it. I knew the Hollow could still get in if it wanted to, and a locked door would not stop it. I tucked the key into my bag and followed Scylla downstairs. On my way to the living room, I went to the kitchen to get Oreo, who was sleeping in his basket. I picked up the basket and headed to the living room. When I reached it, everyone was already there.

"I have called Berry and Hanna's family. They are all packing. They will meet us at the location." I realised that this was the second time someone had referred to this place we were going to as 'the location'. I wondered if Hollows had good hearing or something because if which they were not saying what this 'location' was.

"I can carry Oreo's basket," said Berry who noticed I was struggling to hold the basket along with my two bags. I handed it to her. This was one of the many reasons I loved Berry, she knew too well.

"Now, when we get out, I will say an incantation. Everyone should stay together for it to transport us properly."

We all rushed towards the back door, exited the house and got a little away from it. The stranger muttered an incantation under his breath, and I felt myself being lifted off the ground as everything disappeared from my view and was replaced by a different world. A world of swirling colours.

My friends looked around in awe at the beautiful world. Roughly a minute later, I felt ground under my feet. A split-second later, our surroundings changed. I looked around and saw snow in all directions."

The air was really cold, and I shivered. I wore my black leather jacket which I had earlier tied around my waist. Not much, but better than nothing, I thought.

"Well, we should be able to reach the safe house after a little walking."

"Wait, before we do I have two questions," Hanna started but I knew what would be the answer.

"Explanations later," He said and I was starting to get really frustrated by hearing that. Whenever we asked a question about the magical world, he just said those two words.

We started walking in silence as the stranger led us. I hoped he knew where we were going. And I hardly had any choice but to follow. I was in the middle of nowhere, and I had no idea about how I could get out of there.

After five minutes of walking, we arrived at a beautiful, brown three-storeyed house. I approached the door and tried to open it, it didn't. The stranger came forward and touched the knob and I heard a click. Then he turned it and pushed the door to reveal a dimly lit corridor with doors on both sides and a spiral staircase that led upstairs. We all entered it.

The stranger switched on the lights and opened the first door on the right to reveal a rustic styled sitting room.

"Seems cosy," said Hanna as we all entered the room.

"I have many questions..." I started as we all sat down on the many armchairs and beanbags present in the room.

"Explanations..." He started, but now he had made us wait too long.

"No. I have waited long enough. I want answers. Now." I said in a rather angry manner. The stranger just smiled at me, which really annoyed me.

"You remind me of your mother," He said and I continued glaring at him, "Okay, I know you want answers, but it's not my place to answer these questions. You all will learn everything about the magical world in a training facility."

"Where is this facility?" Asked Ross before I could respond.

"Again, you will learn about it in your training. But if you all want to go to the training facility, you have to pass their test, which is tomorrow. I say you kids better get some rest. You have a big day ahead."

“What test?” Cleo asked.

“You will soon know.”

"When can we meet our parents?" Berry said.

"They will be here any minute," the stranger said, "There are eight rooms upstairs. All of you can rest, I have to go. I will come back tomorrow to take you to the place your tests will be taking place. And about dinner, the kitchen is opposite to this room, it has snacks and canned food, whatever you prefer." Then he left the house. I pulled out my phone from my pocket. No network, big shocker. I checked the time. It was around nine pm.

"I'm hungry," I said before walking out the room. I opened the kitchen. It was large, and the décor was rustic, which I really liked. I ate chips and got out of there. The doorbell rang, my father went and opened the door, wand raised just in case. Hanna and Berry’s parents had arrived. I greeted them, then went upstairs.

As he said, there were eight doors in a dimly lit corridor on the second level. I opened each of them and found eight, rustic styled identical bedrooms with two beds on either side of the room. I wasn’t really interested in the rooms, so I climbed the stairs and went to the third level of the house.

The third level was a library. The spiral staircase was exactly in the centre of the room. The walls were lined with book shelves and the ceiling was a map. It looked like a world map, except it wasn’t of the Earth. The library was again, rustic styled. There were four tables placed around the room which had many armchairs surrounding them. There were lamps floating in mid-air, just above my head. I tried touching one of them, but I couldn’t. The moment my hands were near it, it moved in the opposite direction, as if I had pushed it.

I walked over to all the bookshelves. The books were arranged according totheir subject. One of the shelves had books all about Hollows. ‘Hollows and their existence’, ‘How to kill a Hallow’, ‘A Hollow’s origin explained’, ‘The worst Hallows in existence’ and so on.

I kept going through the shelves, occasionally pausing to read full titles. ‘Dimensions and how we use them’, ‘Magical careers’, ‘Medical care for enchanted creatures’, ‘The line between us and immortality’, ‘Are prophecies real?’, ‘Wonders of the magical world and tourist destinations’, ‘Non-magical world-volume one’, there were fifty-one volumes to that.

As I kept going through the books, one of them finally caught my attention. ‘The most powerful women that ever lived’ which was on a shelf with so many more books about women. ‘Powerful female goddesses’, ‘Non-magical women and what makes them great’, and more books with similar titles.

I pulled out The most powerful women that ever lived and sat down on one of the armchairs. As soon as I did, two lamps glided across the room and placed themselves over the table. I opened the book to the index page.

Andromeda

Karen Hart

Circe

…

I stared at the page, Andromeda, followed by my mother. They both were on opposite sides of a war, yet both their names belonged in the same book. I turned the page to Andromeda.

Even though she is now a Hollow, she was once a powerful and bright woman who graduated from the training facility in thirteen months, setting the world record for least time taken to complete training. Her handler, May Drew was one of the only people Andromeda confided in before she became a Hollow. She created the most powerful dark magic ever to exist. She is known to have died in the Third Battle of Power. She…

I noticed a small circle on the corner of the page. I curiously touched it and a mini version of a Hollow, Andromeda appeared in front of me. She was made of light. It just stood there, her wand pointing at me with a smirk on her face.

I turned the page to my mother, as I did, mini Andromeda disappeared.

She, alongside her husband, Daniel Hart, is known to have killed Andromeda in The Third Battle of Power. She…

I couldn’t read further, I just touched the circle on the corner of that page, and a small figure of a woman appeared on the table. The stranger was right, I thought, I do look like my mother.

“Hey.” I turned around to see Scylla, who had entered the room. “We were all going to bed so I thought I should check on you.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“You weren’t there in the rest of the house, so I figured you’d be here. What’s that?” She said, pointing at the figure of mom.

“That’s a… like a model of mom,” I said, realising how weird it sounded. She looked at it. No doubt wondering if she were alive, how it would be.

“We should go,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said as I closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. We went downstairs and parted ways.

“We share the same room. Second door on the right side of the corridor.” She said before she went to our bedroom, and I went down to grab my bags, after which I went back upstairs. I entered the room, to find Scylla asleep. I had wanted to talk to her about the objects that had appeared in our rooms.

I realised how exhausted I was and had no idea what I had done to be so exhausted. Maybe it was because of the walking in the snow, I thought as I dumped my bags in the corner of the room. Oreo’s basket was already in the room, and Oreo was sitting in it, shivering. I took one of the spare blankets, folded it and put it over Oreo, who immediately stopped shivering. I then got on my bed and pulled the blanket over me, but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could think of was Michael, or my parents, or this training facility. After, what seemed like hours of tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep.

Find out what awaits Cassandra in the training facility in the next chapter.