Hwari swept up from my shadow. ‘I sense people ahead, Caller. I thought you’d want to know.’

  I stopped turning around. “How many?”

  ‘Three.’

  “Your first question,” Wol said slowly, “should have been what they are. There are beings that would pretend to be humans needing your help.”

  It bothered me that Wol had a point.

  ‘Two are human. Though one is a practitioner.’

  “Damn it.” The fact that one of them was a practitioner was a problem.

  Wol edged sideways. “It could be the mercenary, Jain. You have no wardstones, you have no norigae. You have nothing at the moment. This would be a foolish decision.”

  “You’re the one who put it in my head that the mercenary who’s after me might take hostages,” I said. “I can’t… I can’t just walk away.”

  “If you do, the hostages won’t be hostages anymore,” Wol said calmly.”

  Again, he had a point. If he was after me and the hostages were just a method, once I left, there would be no point in holding them.

  “But he’s not going to rescue them either,” I said. “He’ll just leave them behind.”

  Wol said nothing to that.

  I took my gravity knife and cut off a piece of cloth from the expensive t-shirt. Fashioning it into a mask, I tied it over my nose and mouth. Then I did the same for Wol, using his bojagi.

  “Jain, I know you made up your mind. But we cannot afford another altercation. His familiar is a ghost. No challenges, no wit. He’ll burn us the first chance he gets,” Wol said while I tied the loop around his little button nose.

  “I know.”

  Wol let out a frustrated meow. “Please, Hwari.”

  ‘I shall be the guide,’ She replied.

  With the ghost koi leading the way, Wol and I delved into the smoke. I had to nearly bend my body in half to avoid the smoke. But I knew from experience now, no matter how low I got I wouldn’t be able to avoid the smoke completely. Immediately, my eyes began to water and I fought not to wipe at them with my sleeves. They were ruined with smoke and would only worsen the situation.

  The smoke rolled like waves, clinging to everything and making sure I couldn’t see more than two feet ahead. Despite having walked this way hundreds, thousands, of times, I lost all sense of direction. If it wasn’t for Hwari leaving a trail of stark black ink right in front of me, I was sure I might have spun around in circles until I started to suffocate.

  I tried to distract myself by retreating inside myself.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  I was still reeling from the scene in the hallway. The screams, the panic, the fear on everyone’s faces –it was too fresh in my mind. The mercenary wasn’t even a real practitioner. She was a dabbler. If she could do that much damage with a simple illusion and her familiar, I could only guess at what real practitioners like Mina or Victor could do.

  Mina too. She’d done things that I still couldn’t wrap my head around. The invisibility, the sticky wall, creating a wall out of bubbles. Wol had called her a transmutator, a practitioner who could change the properties and characteristics of objects. It looked like she used Haetae as a source of power, and water, to achieve that.

  Yet, knowing more about her didn’t bring me any close to helping me believe that victory was possible tomorrow. Actually, the more I learned about the practice of others, the less I started to believe that this whole thing was doable. Hell, I only beat Exanguin because he was dumb and I really doubted that was the case for the others. I was severely lacking in everything. Practice, knowledge, even being in shape physically– It was painfully obvious that Mina had been training for something like this her entire life. Me? I just got shoved into it yesterday.

  God, I hated how everything felt like I was set up to fail. That I was just a pawn on a chess board and everywhere I looked, rooks, bishops, knights, and the queen was out to take me.

  That was one of the reasons why I asked the merc on where to get more information. I needed to get knowledge from those outside of the trial. Emyrith, Assad, this freaking Table –they were all bound by deals and pacts made years before I was born. They were limited in the ways they could exercise their power.

  What I needed was a wildcard. Something that wasn’t bound by the rules of this game. Something the organizers –my mom, my dad, Emyrith, the Baeks, the Valentines, and every other freaking unknown that had yet to make themselves known– didn’t see coming.

  I was tired of playing by rules that other people set for me.

  Maybe that’s why I was risking my life to save kids who didn’t give a damn about me. I knew Wol thought it was a stupid decision. Scratch that, an idiotic decision, which my familiar was too nice to actually voice out loud. I needed to know that I could make my own decisions, not because someone determined it for me or said it was the best; but because it felt right to do.

  Besides, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t. The mercenaries were here because of me. This was my mess to clean up.

  Hwari’s ink ended. ‘They lie in here.’

  It was a door to a clubroom. There was too much smoke to see through the window.

  “All of them?” I asked.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  ‘No, two. Non-practitioners.’

  “Is there fire inside?”

  ‘No, Jain.’

  “Ok. We get them and leave,” I said to Wol.

  I rolled up my jacket and covered the doorknob in it. There was an article I read about not touching doorknobs during a fire with bare hands. Luckily, it wasn’t locked and opened easily.

  Kevin Sloan was slouched over a corner, coughing his lungs out. He had his hand on his throat and a half-empty water bottle beside him. The six-foot blonde had drool slathered all over the front of his shirt.

  Next to him was a girl I barely recognized. Dark skin, dark straight hair that ended around her neck, and glasses. She was lying on the floor clutching her leg which was bleeding from a nasty looking cut. This was the girl that Exanguin had attacked in an effort to insure panic back then. I was sure of it.

  “Kevin,” I hissed, walking over to them and bending down to get a better look at the girl’s leg. “What the fuck are you still doing here?”

  He had unfocused eyes. “H-Hallow?”

  I couldn’t help it. “Hello to you too.”

  Damn it. The girl –was it Angelica? Angela?– was wearing jeans. I couldn’t roll it up past her calves.

  Kevin then flopped over to me, clutching at my legs. “C-close the door. There’s a–”

  “Get off me, goddamit.” He was heavy and much bigger than me from all the sports he did. “I’m trying to help you.”

  He quieted down at that.

  “You gotta get me out of here, man,” He kept saying. “Please. I have my whole life ahead of me.”

  “I believe he might be delirious,” Wol chipped in.

  “You think?” But I didn’t put too much of my attention on the side show. The entire right leg of the girl’s jeans was stained with blood, from thigh to ankle.

  Finally, I decided that maybe the best choice was to leave it on. She was wearing skinny jeans and I was sure that the pressure from such tight fabric was more than enough to keep her from bleeding out more than it already was. I cut out two more strips of cloth from my shirt and fashioned masks for Kevin and the girl.

  “Here, wear this,” I handed it to Kevin, but he let it drop to the floor. “Oh, fucking hell.”

  In the end, I had to tie it up for him. Then I somehow managed to get the girl into a piggyback position on my back.

  “Kevin. Can you hear me? We’re going to leave now.”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes were still unfocused.

  I slapped him.

  “Kevin!”

  The slap stirred a bit of consciousness into the jock’s eyes and the blue pupils focused at my words. “Y-yeah, getting out. I c-can do that. But I can’t see.”

  “Just follow me,” I replied.

  Kevin Sloan reached out for my hand and grabbed it.

  “Jesus,” I swore. “You’re a grown man and you just– never mind.”

  There was no point in wasting even more time. I grabbed Kevin’s hand firmly, while piggy-backing the girl with my impressive weight of a hundred-sixty pounds and change. With my even more impressive height of five-seven, I managed to put a little more than six inches off the floor for her.

  The hallway was filled with smoke. I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t get down and start crawling either. Not with Kevin holding my hand and the girl on my back. I’d just have to run for it.

  “Hwari. I need you,” I said, but there was no need. She was already leading the way.

  We got maybe ten feet before there was a rumbling sound. The ground shook.

  “Quick,” Wol hissed and bounded ahead into the thick smoke.

  “Kevin, don’t get lost,” I said.

  I didn’t wait for a reply. The smoke was getting thicker, attaining an almost viscous quality that made me feel as if there was muck all around me. I knew the cloth around my nose and mouth was helping, just not helping enough. There was also that rumbling. Maybe the fire in the bathroom really had hit a gas line. I could hear the crackling of fire now.

  ‘Jain, to your left.’

  I couldn’t see more than two inches in front of my face. It was only Hwari’s directions that kept me going. Within a few steps, I saw the last end of Wol’s tail disappear into the cloud. I followed again, until Hwari’s next set of directions. I stumbled forward, holding the girl, dragging Kevin, and praying to whatever would listen that the two were still alive.

  I sensed it before I saw it.

  There was a deep guttural sound like gravel grinding on stone, followed by multiple clicks. At the same time everything brightened as fire flared up behind the smoke, casting shades on the tarred wall. More gouts of flame continued to combust, drawing streaks of facade lightning in my vision.

  The angry smoke was moving in that direction, tricking my skin into thinking that there was a draft. I pushed myself harder, away from the smoke, because everything from my Third Eye, to my Sixth Sense, to my too human instincts were ordering me to do so. I did a little hop to make sure the girl was secure on my back.

  “Hwari, what’s happening?” I hissed as quietly as I could.

  ‘The Salamander is feeding.’

  “Shouldn’t the fire be decreasing?”

  ‘No, it feeds from the flame and feeds the flame. Please, Jain. Your voice must be as wind, and footsteps as light as snow.’

  There was only one Salamander that I knew of, and it belonged to Victor Valentine.

  Did he take this chance to strengthen his familiar? Was that even possible?

  And did he really choose to do so when people were getting hurt?

  I stuffed the questions into the mental pocket already full to the brim with my other questions. Wol could address them later.

  After what seemed like forever, I saw the entrance in sight. With a last ditch effort, I was through.

  Sirens, people clamoring, hands –so many fucking hands– surrounded me. I briefly saw a woman in a business suit lead Kevin Sloan away to an ambulance, while she screamed in the phone on her hand. The weight on my back lessened and two paramedics immediately got to work, taking care of Angelica.

  One of the paramedics was with me. He was walking me towards one of the ambulances.

  “I have you, Son. I have you. Are you hurt anywhere?” He bombarded me with questions. "Any chest pain? Dizziness?"

  I coughed and briefly contemplated giving him snark, just due to the Jain Hallow default setting. Then I saw his eyes and saw something I seldom see.

  It had been in his voice too, something that edged on respect and even pride. I'd never heard it before, at least not towards me. Ever.

  He was saying it to me.

  I just gave him a nod. “I’m ok, can you–, can you check on that girl? I think she got bit."

  He sat me down on the back of an ambulance and put an aluminum blanket on me. “I'm sure she’ll be fine. I’m going to get you some water, you sit tight. Alright, son?”

  I nodded.

  The paramedic –a guy in his forties, maybe hispanic– turned around one last time. “You saved lives today, young man. Your parents should be proud.” Then he left.

  Once he was gone, I absorbed the scene. The school was completely on fire, the second floor, third floor, fourth floor; every window was expelling smoke like a waste plant. The New York Fire Department was coming in full force; ladders, uniforms, everything. But my eyes were drawn to different things. Everywhere around me, kids were crying and hugging their parents. Some, grandparents. Some of the kids who had gotten out earlier had grouped up, laughing and joking. Probably easing their nerves.

  But everyone had someone.

  "Practitioner."

  'Caller.'

  Wol sat in the middle of an alleyway, garbage cans on one side and sewer vents on the other. Hwari floated a little above him.

  After making sure no one was looking, I took off.

  Symphony, Books 1 and 2 are now out on Amazon!

  Symphony is a Sci-fi Fantasy LitRPG series about creation, consequence, and starting with nothing. Books 1 and 2 are available now, with more to come.