Everyone started screaming. The idle teenagers now stood, battle-ready, growing horns or holding thunder in their hands, a circle of teachers and girls in cardigans standing around their circle. It was weird, but nothing weirder than what had already happened. 

The teachers stood around the older teens.

The older teens stood around the younger teens.

And the younger teens stood around us. 

We were the fire-cat’s target. 

The small trail of smoke had grown, and we could see the tongues of fire leaping up in the sky. 

“Maybe I can turn back time and give us an advantage,” Luke said, but he began to cough and choke. “I’m allergic to cats,” he gasped. “Even twenty-foot-flaming-cats. Its hair is blowing over on the wind.” Luna bent down to help him, since he was gasping on the ground.

I reached out for the trees around me. Maybe I could use my magic? I was pushed away by the scream of the burning plants, which were like knives stabbing into my back over and over. 

The trail of fire had almost reached the school. “Turn on the guards!”a teacher shouted. I think she meant the towers around the borders of the campus. 

That was when the ground exploded. 

A massive fireball consumed the left wing of the school as thousands of humanoid figures made of flame leapt around. A teacher with water power extinguished them, but there was a bigger concern.

The left wing was where the hospital was.

Where the students slept.

And everyone who wasn't out here, about to get murdered by a bunch of fire golems, was in there with flame and heat and smoke. It wasn’t like some of it was on fire, either. The entire building was caving in under its own weight, smoke stretching to the sky.

I heard the screams. 

I heard their pain.

But I couldn’t save them.

The line of teachers broke to save them, and the fire golems raced ahead. 

A girl with a fox on her shoulder hissed a gold ball of energy out of her mouth, stopping one of the golems. 

But the other golem, enraged by the death of its comrade, it reached out and touched her chest.

Touched her.

That was all it took for the girl to explode into flames, running in circles and screaming for a few seconds before falling down, a burning corpse on the freshly mowed lawn. 

Her friends looked at her body, tears coming to their eyes. 

They charged at the golems, screaming battle cries. But every time they rook on down, another student would be touched by the golem and collapse in a rush of flames. The burning bodies strewn on the ground spread fire to the grass and topiaries, and the left wing caved in with a shower of sparks. The lawns surrounding it were now fields of fire, the boys and girls who I’d seen laughing and talking and texting on their phones now ran around, clutching the bodies of their friends, or lying among the blazing fields and courtyard, life rising out of them with the smoke.

Have you ever smelled burnt flesh? 

It smells like the worst thing ever. 

It smells like death and destruction and somehow, rubber. And pepper. But that could be the fact that I was using the napkin from my lunch to stop the smoke from flowing into my lungs and giving me all kinds of bad things like cancer. 

All these innocent people were dying because of me.

That was when I saw the Pyline.

It loomed over us like some prehistoric monster, a vivid orange streaked with gold and black. Its eyes were filled with hatred, and its fangs were as sharp as Death’s scythe. It was made of fire, at last fifty feet tall, with a long, lashing tail with a burst of fire at the end. It would have been cute if it was a kitten. As a monster? It was like looking at your death. 

“Thheee Chhhamp-p-pionsss,” it hissed in a female-sounding voice, drawing its words into a purring snarl. 

“Sssseiz-z-ze ttthhhhem.”

An army of fire golems raced forward, the ground burning behind them. The few living students and teachers were either injured, tending to the injured, or fighting for their own lives. The Pyline let out a snort, a fireball of death coming out of its nose. Cats have cute noses. This one didn’t.

The fire didn’t hit any of us-- or at least we thought it did, until Jade started screaming in agony. Luke was choking on the Pyline’s hair, so he couldn’t turn back time and save her. She screamed again, the sleeve of her shirt burning, the flames reaching for her pale skin, reaching for her hair, reaching for her clothes… Jade’s friend pulled water from the fountain and doused Jade’s arm with it. She sighed in relief, but fainted away as soon as she wasn’t at risk of losing a limb. 

The army of golems had created a wall around us, a burning wall, cunning us off from whatever could possibly help us. Not like anyone out there could. 

Fearless didn’t give up, though. 

She slammed her hands into the ground, spiky necklace glowing. The ground shook, but nothing miraculous happened. 

Jade’s friend reached for the fountain, but the fire golems had evaporated the water, so she couldn’t do anything. 

Nainika turned into a fire golem, shouting “fight fire with fire!” but the others pinned her.

The Pyline, satisfied at our weakness, let out a howl. Chains made of fire appeared out of nowhere and wrapped around us, singing Fearless’s hair and making everyone's clothing smoke. I bit my tongue until it bled when the heat touched my skin, before shouting something I shouldn’t have said in public. 

A purple blur flew down from the sky, blowing out most of the golems. The purple thing was a person wearing a violet cape, I realized as the chains touched the bare skin of my arms, making my skin blister and fill with pain. 

Luke, who had slumped forward, leaning on the chains that held us to keep it from touching anyone else, looked to be in terrible pain. His hoodie had caught fire and the flames were reaching for the skin of his neck. He let out an agonized moan before falling silent. Wss he dead?

“You…” the Pyline hissed at the cloaked figure. “I thhhought I killllled you yearrrs aggggo.” 

“You didn’t,” the figure said. “And...they’re...MINE!” 

Wind blew away the fire chains and extinguished the golems, lifting us into the air. 

My eyes closed and everything went dark. 

I woke up some time later, bandages on the places where the fire had touched me, looking into a pair of rainbow eyes. “Where am I?” I asked.

“The only palace where you’ll be safe.”

A girl about sixteen years old leaned over me, her round face the only image on a gray screen. Not a gray screen, I realized, but a cave roof. 

“I’m Celeste, or the Windmaster of the Fallen Champions. I saved you. Actually, Maya used her gravity swap to stop you from cracking your head on the ground, but I blew out the golems, so you have to admit I did a big thing.”

“It was real?”

“Sure, it was real! Jade has a few more scars to add to her total, and Luke-- I’m not sure about what happened with him. He has horrible burns. I’m not sure the degree, but it has to be at least third. I’m unhappy to say that your power may be damaged because of the trees dying so soon after you bonded to them, and your left arm--err, don’t look at it. You were touched by the Pyline’s flame-tail when you fell out of my wind. I’m sorry, really sorry, and I hope you aren't left-handed.”

“I’m not.” my arm really stung, like it had been stabbed by a bunch of redhot needles. 

“Well, that’s good. Maya is trying to heal the others--Luke isn’t doing too well. But he should heal and might be able to get back out on the battlefield soon.”

“B-battlefield?” 

“Oh yes. Have you ever taken a class?”

“No, I just got to the school when it was…”

“Oh no. I’m so sorry. Here, see if you can stand.”

I rose slowly, taking in my surroundings. 

I was in a large cave, sitting on a sort of bed laid on a slab of stone. It was curved slightly, like one of those chairs at a dentist’s office. 

In front of me, twenty feet away, there was a tunnel leading out of the cave. It overlooked blue sky, so we must have been on a cliff. I slid off the bed-thing gracefully, redhot pain stinging in my arm. “Aagh! It hurts so much! I wanna rip it off just to get rid of the pain!”

“That’s a good thing, considering that if it did any more damage your nervous system would be harmed and you couldn’t feel at all.” 

I sighed. 

“You said you were Windmaster of the Fallen Champions. What does that mean?” 

“It means,” she said seriously, “that we’re the ones who failed to save the world.”

“What?” I stepped back but bumped into the bed-thing. 

“Not the world, but…” her voice lowered.

“There were others. Me, Maya, Timothy, Eric, Victoria, Maxine, Alberto, and Rose. We were the Champions. We could defeat the Pyline--the one who torched the school. He wanted to destroy us--the Chosen Ones, defenders of the Earth. We used to fight demons and monsters from the shadows, but then pyline killed them all. We thought he’d done us a favor, but he started killing us, too. The Chosen Ones, armed with their powers, set out against him,and--”

She swallowed. 

“I’m an orphan because of it. No-one survived. He turned the battlefield into a death pit of fire and blood.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No need, it’s in the past now. Because more attacks came, until we were almost wiped out. We started getting sent to schools like your’s before our Talents even came in. To keep us safe, they said. That backfired when the Pyline found out where the schools were.”

“Hundreds--thousands--of young, Talentless people died among those who promised great things to our future. It got bad. There are only five magic-schools left on Earth now.”

“On Earth? Are we--”

“Yes. We’re on our homeword.”

“But I’m a normal girl!”

“No. You are a Chosen One, with mixed blood. Half human, half...something else.” 

‘How are we on another planet?”

“Not planet. Homeworld.”

“Oh.”

“You’re the new generation of Champions--Pyline defeators. The next Rose.”

“Rose?”

“She was a nature-speaker, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You inherited her power. She died saving me.”

“Oh.”

“Come on. I need to introduce you to Maya.”

***

Maya was a teenage girl with golden-brown hair, Caucuasian skin, and green eyes. She and Celeste both wore purple cloaks.

“Hi, I saved you from dying. I’m Maya. Gravity Manipulator.” She grinned. 

I smiled through the pain in my arm. 

“So, we’re here to help you guys,” she said. We were in a different cave--there was a system of them running through the cliffs of our “homeworld”. Luke smiled, lying on a rough wooden table where it looked like Maya was doing something magic to the skin on his arm. “Oh, hi, uh…”

“Emerald.”

“Yeah. It seems you’re better off than me.” 

“I guess.” I touched the bandage on my arm.

“Hello,”Jade said nervously, stepping into the cave carefully. She wore a sky-blue cloak instead of a while blouse. “Emmie said she smelled smoke. Is it the...Pyline?”

“You’d see it on the horizon, too, so don’t worry, it isn’t the Plyine. Probably just Luna practicing her magic.”

Oh. The fire-girl.

“Well, as long as we stay together, we’ll be okay.” Celsest beamed. “It’ll be okay.”

Even though I inherited the magic of a girl who got killed by a fire-cat-of-death?

Maya said something magic-sounding and took a small bottle of blue potion from a shelf. “I’m gonna get back to regrowing the skin in your arms,” she said to Luke. “You guys might want to leave.”

“As we walked out on a narrow ledge overlooking a deep gorge, the way back to our own caves(we had caves of our own to live in, Celeste and explained, until we could get back to Earth)we heard Luke scream “HOLY MOTHER OF CHICKEN BISCUITS!” 

***

I soon adjusted to life with the others. I moved into a cave, which was actually pretty cool, I learned about the Chosen Ones, basically demon-fighters with superpowers, tried to talk to the trees around me(which usually meant I’d feel like knives were being pounded into my back until I fainted)and learned about the others.

Nainkia’s mom was also a Chosen One, but she was back on Earth doing important stuff, and had so many other kids that she didn’t even notice Nainika slipping away.

Luke was a normal person until he felt his compass necklace buzzing as he walked closer and closer to the school. He got his parents to let him in easily.   

Luna was a rich girl who liked music and wanted to be a famous pop star until she accidentally set her old school on fire. She ran away with guilt even though no one knew it was her, and got admitted for having fire-power, kind of. 

Fearless stopped a landslide from crushing her town, and her grandmother recognized what she was and snuck her off to the school. 

Emmie and Jade had been friends for a while, until Emmie, helping her older brother by watching his post as a lifeguard, made the ocean spit out a drowning toddler. Jade followed her to school, accidentally making the weather really bad, and they both got admitted. 

My story wasn’t nearly so awesome. 

“It was an accident,” I sighed, looking into the campfire flames. We were outside, and luna was making perfect food. She could be an amazing chef. 

“I got sent to the school by accident.”

“Oh.”

Celeste looked like she had something on her mind.

“It’s the...the anniversary of…”

“The big battle,” Maya finished. “The fatal one.”

I didn’t want to know what happened....

***

It had been a few months on the “homeworld” when celeste came to us with a newspaper clipping she got from earth somehow. 

DOUBLE-TRAGEDY

Boarding school burns down on anniversary of the William-Amsterdam fire

“Oh, yeah. That was another one of the Pyline’s attempts. He took most of the town and half the mountain, too.” Maya said sadly. 

I read the article, but soon put it down--it was too sad. 

500 students died. 

Because of me and the others. 

There was another a few weeks later:

ARSON OR ACCIDENT?

School fire kills 300, injures 57. 

Another appeared the next week.

火は学校を取ります,

the headline said. 

“Fire takes school,or something like that,” Celeste said. I’m not fluent, but I know some Japanese.”

A short time later, Maya called a meeting.

Fearless: “Why are so many schools attacked by the Pyline?” 

Luke: “In Japan, too?”

Luna: “I feel really bad now.”

Emmie: “I should be a firefighter, only magical.”

Jade: “WE’REGONNADIE!”

Maya: “No we aren’t.”

Celeste: “What’s the meeting for?”

Me: “I need some lunch.”

Maya: The Pyline must have a spy, someone who can tell him where we are.”

Luke: “Where’d you get that?”

Maya: “Your grandmother lives in the same state as the first school-fire, just blocks away.”

Me: “Uh-oh.”

Maya: “Fearless, your cousins live by the second. Nainika, your mom went to Japan for her job. It’s hunting us.”

Jade: “MmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmIdon’tlikethis.”

Emmie: “Who needs a hose when you can magic stuff?” 

Maya: “You listening?”

Me: “I am!”

Maya: I did research, and found possible suspects for the traitor.”

Fearless: “Good.”

Luna: “I wanna fight them…”

Maya: “The first is Adam Wyse. No known Talent. None of them have one, actually. The second is Franklin Fennel. The third is Mickie Sawyer. A girl.”

(Shows pictures of brown-haired boys who look alike and blond-haired smiling girl)

Maya: “The fourth--we don’t have a name so skip him. The fifth and sixth are twins, Mike and Mark Hassan.”

(Shows pictures of the twins, who have glasses.) 

Maya: “I have a plan to find out if they’re the traitor. You guys are gonna date them.”

All: “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?” 

Maya: “Five girls, five male suspects. One female suspect, one boy on our side.”

Luna: “What if they’re LGBTQ+?”

Maya: “Wing it.” 

Me: “I’m dating a possible murderer?”

Maya: “Not really dating. And they wouldn't have killed anybody.”

Jade: “Well, thisisgonnabeadatewheresomethingunexpectedhappens…” 

Me: (facepalms)

(Written during writer's block. Proceed with caution.)