The Champions: part 1

I didn’t know anyone when I arrived.

Everyone seemed to know each other.

I stood in a courtyard made out of circles of different-colored stone, towering up into a fountain made of stone rings that must have been as tall as three trucks. Each of the eight towering levels was a different stone--marble, granite, and something slick and black I didn’t recognize. I recognize most things. Like the bushes surrounding the courtyard were arborvitaes, and the topiaries were the Muses of Greek mythology. The courtyard was the thing that held my attention, though. Each of the rings of marble, granite, and black rock were polished so smoothly that I could slip and fall if I took a step off the gravel path I was on and I was wearing black leather boots with strong grips. 

The courtyard had to be a hundred yards wide,symbols carved into the stone bands: one that looked like Pi, another that looked like a seer’s third eye, and one that looked like a glass slipper. Countless people roamed around, taking selfies by the topiary, chatting, or staring into the fountain like it held all the world’s possibilities. They all seemed a little like me, with a dreamy but confident attitude. But there was one difference: none of them were thirteen. 

I stepped into the courtyard, walking among seniors and juniors and freshmen (why weren’t they called freshwomen?) all taller, and probably smarter than me. I’d gotten a phone a few months ago, and had only had one crush in my life, and was a straight B student. 

“Oh, hi! Are you new? I’m Lily!” a bubbly voice said. I saw a redheaded girl with white skin and black eyes looking at me, dressed in a gray cardigan with sky-blue cropped sleeves. She wore it over a white blouse with a gray uniform skirt. I don’t know how come I remembered all this, I guess the events are permanently inside my mind.

“Uh, yeah, I’m Emerald.”

“Ooh! Not a lot of people are good enough at their Talent to get into our school at a young age!”

“...Yeah…heh…” I looked down and shifted the weight of my trunk. I could have sworn that there was a capital T in Talent. You could hear it. Maybe it was my imagination… 

“Well, come to the fountain! It’s time for the Stones to Choose.”

There definitely were capital letters in there.   

I followed Cardigan Girl over to the fountain. No, not followed, try was dragged. Try was dragged over by a bright-eyed eighteen-year-old, sliding on the slick floor. 

“Back off everybody!” she shouted. Several other cardigan girls, all with the same cropped hair and gray uniforms; the only difference was their sleeves (which were all different colors) and their hair. 

“IT BEGINS,” a thundering voice said from somewhere. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but there was a crowd around the edges of the courtyard, three people thick, all of them filming. Was this a prank? I looked around frantically, knowing that whatever I did would be forever preserved in the phones (and p texts, memes, and posts) of over two hundred teens. 

I examined the wall of people--no exists.

I was blocked in.

Me and several others.

The one closest to me was a girl with silvery, wavy hair falling to her midribs, dressed in a classy outfit that was likely really expensive. Her eyes were gray, or blue, I couldn't tell. She looked about my age, but way richer. She fiddled with a silver necklace. I had good eyesight, so I could tell that it said LUNA in looping lettering. The others weren’t too close to me. 

We were all standing around the immense fountain, and I wondered what I was supposed to do. If this was a prank, someone better say “tricked ya” and get it over with. 

The thunderous voice returned, chanting what sounded like an ancient chant, other voices woven into it. The teens were singing along.  

“THEY MAY BE CHOSEN, THEY MAY BE FAKE.

THIS MAY BE FATE, OR MAY BE A MISTAKE.

IF HEARTS ARE PURE AND TALENTS STRONG,

THEN CHAMPIONS THEY ARE AND CHAMPIONS THEY BELONG. 

BUT IF THEY FAIL OR LOSE THE FIGHT

THEN WE ARE LOST TILL THE NEXT SUNNIGHT.”

I prayed that it was a prank.

It seemed like an ancient-druid sort of thing, only the druids were all wealthy-looking teens with cool hair and phones instead of wands. 

Oh no, I’ve gotten sent to a school for witches. I knew I shouldn’t trust my stepmom, I thought. I don’t have magic so I’m gonna die a painful death when one of their monsters eats my head.  

I felt oddly good about this. Maybe I could mail back my severed fingers and Peter Pettegrew my stepmom. Boy would she feel bad about that! But only if I survived, and if I didn’t lose my fingers to a beast’s mouth. I wasn’t cutting any monsters open for a joke. 

That was when the fountain began to sink into the ground. 

It was going down ring by ring, until it wasn’t there anymore. It was pretty elaborate for a prank, and I worried that a saber-toothed tiger was going to leap out of the hole and kill someone, and that this was a witch school.

The stone around the courtyard began to sink down as well, collapsing inwards in rings. The carvings lit up with a gold glow, and when the ring of stone I was standing on started to sink, I panicked and tried to run. But my feet were stuck to the ground. 

“GOODLUCK, NEWBS!” someone shouted. 

The courtyard was turning itself inside out, and I was already fifty feet below ground level. My feet were still stuck. 

Maybe I’ll have to fight something, like a gladiator.

Maybe I’m on a game show.  

No, this is real.

The courtyard had run out of rings to drop into the depths, and the teens looking over the edge had hopped into the topiaries. I had the sensation that I was upside down, staring over a hole at the sky above. 

The circle of sky was only as big as my hand when I extended it. 

You’d think that after this, the courtyard would stop moving, it was already really low. But it kept on lowering, until it was lust the inside-out fountain and the ring me and the others were standing on. The runes stopped glowing. The circle of sky was shrinking, it was like being in an elevator, only with white marble below my toes and smooth, black-stone walls. 

“We’re gonna die,” moaned the girl on the other side of the circle, across from me. She had blue hair cropped around her round face, green eyes, freckles, and a white button-up shirt with a black tie. She looked sick.

“Snap out of it, Jade, we’re almost to the bottom,” LUNA-necklace girl said. 

“How would you know?”

“Because I do!”

“Well, Miss Cyrokinesis, I’m proud to say that you won’t die, because you’re my friend.” A tall girl about seventeen, dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves cut off with a green hoodie around her waist said, pushed her short black hair out of her eyes.

A girl who looked to be in between the ages of fifteen and seventeen pushed her blond hair out of her face, revealing sharp gray eyes. She was also dressed in white-- had I missed a memo? She had a string of different-colored crystals around her neck, with so many on it that it stuck out spikily.   

“I don’t know what my Talent is! What do I do?”

“Chill. You’re Fearless.”

“I hope I get Geokinesis. I mean, there was the whole landslide thing…Yeah. something earthy.”  

I didn’t know what geokinesis was. 

“Hey, how about we work on seeing if we’re the Champions or not, so we can defeat the High Pyline of Elmsboar so no one else has to die,” a boy said, The only boy here, I realized. He looked to be eighteen, with wavy brown hair, gold eyes, and a stopwatch on a chain around his neck. He was dressed all in black. 

“The what?” I asked.

“The mouse has a voice!” LUNA-necklace girl said. 

“I’m not a mouse!”

“I bet her Talent is shapeshifting into tiny things. Or invisibility!” 

“Stop it!” 

“Sorry, but you’re really quiet.” She didn’t sound sorry. 

We went down in silence.

Eventually, the neverending elevator ride stopped, dropping us in a black shaft in a room the color of embers, with a domed ceiling hundreds of feet high. Everything was made of fire and gold and shadow. I mean it. Carvings lined the walls and domed ceiling, and a circle of stones sat in the middle of the room, giant and sparking like the crystals around Fearless’s neck. Each one was a different color: red, blue, green, violet, black, and white. Gold-and-flame podiums stood behind each one. The stones faced inward and were rough-cut, their tips pointy enough to impale someone. The someone would have to be really tall, though, because they were a hundred feet high.

“Just walk to the podium, and… everything happens fast, my sister says,” the LUNA-necklace girl said. 

I stood in front of the blue stone, looking around, This was not a prank. This was magic.

I pressed my hands to the gold podium, because it felt right.

The blue stone lit up, a scream of icy magical chimes exploding forward. I think that’s purple prose, which writers should avoid, but it’s what happened. 

“THE CHAMPION HAS BEEN CHOSEN FOR THE LEAGUE OF THE BLUE STONE,” an ethereal voice shrieked. “EMERALD HALL, OF THE TALENT…”

“No way. You’re the champion,” the gold-eyed boy breathed.

  “NATURE-SPEAKER!” 

I suddenly heard a thousand voices in my head and could feel things moving miles above my head, at the surface. Roots. Leaves. I could feel the bees coming to pollinate my flowers, I could feel how my topiaries felt about being climbed (annoyed) and I could smell a million of my blossoms. 

Mine.

It wasn’t a word for nature, but somehow…

Nature was mine and I was nature’s.

I stepped away from the podium-thing--or, I tried to. Chains made out of embers and what looked like liquid gold flew out of the podium and wrapped around my wrists and ankles. 

“You can’t leave your role,” the gold-eyed boy said. “I mean, you're a Champion! A chosen one! If you leave, then we might be doomed!” 

“Doomed? Where are we? What’s happening! I was told this was a normal boarding school, and I can hear plants and there’s a talking rock and the room is made out of fire and shadows and gold! The courtyard turned inside out! I AM FREAKING OUT!” 

“You don’t know, Mouse?” LUNA-necklace girl asked. “Watch.” She stepped onto the podium in front of the white stone. Nothing happened. 

“NO! I HAVE A TALENT! WHY DON’T I GET THE STONE’S RESPONSE?” 

“Try the purple one,” the gold-eyed boy said. “Or, maybe black! You seem to fit that mysterious type, Luna.”

Her name is Luna. 

Luna stepped on the podium for the black stone. It began to hum, and she leaned back like she could hear a million voices screaming their heart out inside her head. 

“Knew I had pyrokinesis,” she said, looking at her hands as tiny flames danced between her fingers. I mean, I could what plants, but this was so cool. She was holding flames. 

There weren’t any magic chains on her, so I guessed it had something to do with my powers or spirit or ability to freak out and run away. 

The girl with the crystal necklace, who I guessed was called Fearless but could just have a cool nickname, stepped up to the white stone. It burst out glowing, with the same angelic voice stuff. Fearless looked undaunted by the fact that the crystals on her necklace were glowing. 

“Raise your hand if you knew I had geokinesis!” Fearless shouted. “I mean, I got admitted here because I stopped a landslide with my mind! Luke, it’s your turn!”

The gold-eyed boy (Luke! I thought) stepped towards the blue, where I was, then the red. He couldn’t seem to decide. 

“Compromise and go to the purple one!” Fearless shouted. 

He did, touching the podium, reaching out with elegant fingers that probably would be great for playing the piano, and the stone began to light up--

He did, touching the podium, reaching out with elegant fingers that probably would be great for playing the piano, and the stone began to light up--

He did, touching the podium, reaching out with elegant fingers that probably would be great for playing the piano, and the stone began to light up--

He did, touching the podium, reaching out with elegant fingers that probably would be great for playing the piano, and the stone began to light up--

“AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO REALIZES THAT HE TOUCHED THAT OVER AND OVER LIKE HE WAS IN A TIME LOOP?” I shouted, my voice bouncing off the walls. 

“Yeah,” Luke said. “It seems I can… control time? And, I’m the Champion of the Volet Stone.” Luna looked at him, stunned. 

Luna looked at him, stunned.

Luna looked at him, stunned.

Luna looked at him, stunned.

“What? It’s fun to make you do that.”

One of the girls, the one with blue hair and green eyes who was convinced that she was going to die in the elevator, whispered to her friend, the girl with the green hoodie around her waist. I noticed a flower tucked behind her ear and realized that I could eavesdrop on them. “...I already know I have cryokinesis, can’t I skip this?”

“Jade, you can do this. Besides, we need to at least see if you’re a champion. Everyone else here is.”

I hadn't realized it, but when Luna, Luke, and Fearless had speed on the podiums, there’d been a hum in the air that sounded like CHAMPION… Maybe you heard the full message inside your head and everyone else heard the angelic voices?

“But you’re so strong and cool!”

“And so are you. Look, you’re the ice and I’m the sea. Together we can bring the storm.”

“Thanks. But… I think I’m Blue, like the new girl.”

New girl? Well, I am new...

“Being a Champion doesn’t have anything to do with your Stone.”

“Okay. I’ll just…” 

Jade ran over to me, smiling. “Sorry, I need to--” her arm brushed the chain on my right wrist. “Oh! it’s hot! Like… the breath of the Pyline…” I noticed a burn scar on the side of her neck, below her ear, and wondered where it came from. And, what was this Pyline? 

She touched the podium gently, and a halo of snowflakes fell around her head. There wasn’t an angelic voice to be heard over the whirling wind and snow. 

Snow blew around and around, but was soon melted in the heat the room gave off. 

“CHAMPION JADE, ACCEPT YOUR POWER,” the voices said.

“What power?” she stammered, looking freaked out. 

“THE POWER TO PROTECT YOUR FRIENDS…”

Everything stopped. 

“So they’re mind readers,” Jade said. “I thought ‘yes’.”

Next, Jade’s friend ran to the red stone. The angelic voices proclaimed that she controlled water, and everything went silent. 

I was the only one who had been chained to the podium. What was wrong with me? Was I, I dunno, half evil? Was nature a dangerous power? Was it trying to make sure that I didn’t run away? 

Someone fell down the elevator shaft. 

Her soft, pink hair was a little messy from the fall, and her light caramel skin looked pink with exhilaration, but she was in one piece after falling hundreds of feet. 

“Sorry I’m late. I’m Nainika.” she dashed to the green stone, pressed her hands into it, and, as three whole choirs of angels all sang, turned into me. 

She had the same shirt, stringy red hair, the same dark green eyes, the same pale skin, and the same perplexed look. 

Then she was a cat.

Then she was Luke. 

Then she was herself. 

“Shapeshifting.” 

All the stones lit up, the eyes of the others glowing the color of their stones. I was sure my eyes were doing the same, because there were two beams of blue light going up to the top of the dome. One mine, the other, Jade’s. 

“CHAMPIONS!” the voice screamed. “PROTECT THE OTHERS. THE HIGH PYLINE OF ELMSBOAR IS COMING. IT APPROACHES THE SCHOOL TO CAPTURE WHO HE CAN USE AND KILL WHO HE CANNOT. HURRY! THE PATH IS YOURS!”

There was a bright flash of light and we were standing in the courtyard, the fountain rising. 

“We’re the champions!” Fearless shouted. “We received a message! The Pyline is coming! He will kill and capture everyone here if he cannot be stopped!”

No sooner had she said this, a plume of smoke rose on the horizon, in the woods. At first I thought oh no, a forest fire! but then my brain did this thing.

Py. 

Pyro.

Pyro means fire.

Line.

Feline.

Feline as in cat. 

A fire cat is coming to kill us. 

Celeste and Maya: I had to cut out your part because it was so long, but don't worry, you're still awesome! You're going to be in the next one, for sure! (Curse these word limits)