Protagonist Bound

by Geanna Culbertson

  “It was no big deal,” she responded. “He tried to hurt you and I. . . Wait a sec. What is . . . Crisa, look out!”

  Spear, I thought without hesitation.

  I spun to my left and blocked the sword that Blue had seen coming at me from behind. Then I jerked my elbow into the enemy guard’s chin, twisted my spear to knock the sword out of his hand, and right-kicked his shin. With one sturdy side-thrust to his ribs and a reverse swing of my staff to his head later, the guard was out for the count.

  Wand.

  I realized then that a bookshelf on the wall a few feet back had been pushed aside and was now revealing another passageway. This one led to a meeting hall that lay beyond this part of the room. When I turned around again I found Daniel at my side—evidently having run back up here to collect me.

  “I thought there were only three guards with that group,” Daniel said, staring at my wand.

  “And I thought you used to work here. What, did you never take a look at the floor plans?” I said as I gestured toward the gaping hole in the wall.

  “You’re blaming me for this? You’re the one they’re trying to—”

  “Um, guys,” Jason interrupted.

  We both whipped our heads toward him. “What?”

  Jason didn’t say anything; he just pointed upwards. In response Daniel and I tilted our heads and saw that about ten bookshelves on the higher levels of the library were beginning to slide forwards and to the side.

  Oh, darn.

  Daniel looked over my shoulder then grabbed his sword. “Duck, roundhouse, over the edge,” he said curtly.

  “What?”

  “Now!”

  In the periphery of my sight I saw another guard rushing through the opening behind me and I got what Daniel was saying. The second the guard raised his sword to bring it down upon me, I ducked. When I did, Daniel had his sword at the ready and clashed it forcefully with the guard’s. His strike pushed the attacker off balance. I spun around the guard’s side and roundhouse-kicked him toward Daniel.

  The wobbling guard sailed forwards and when he was within range Daniel hammered him in the face—sending him back to me to finish the job by grabbing his right arm and throwing him over the railing.

  He landed with a thud somewhere below, out cold.

  “Nice work,” Daniel said.

  “Back ’atcha,” I replied. “I . . . hold that thought.”

  Spear.

  With the dull end of my staff I slammed an overeager guard in the side of the neck as he came charging through the doorway like a crazed bull. Then I rapidly rotated my arm to hock his leg out from under him.

  He flipped like a pancake and landed with a splat on the floor beside me.

  Wand.

  I looked back up and saw that the bookshelves had now been fully pushed aside and guards were starting to pour out of them. Some began to run the library’s coiling floor to pursue us on foot, while others drew their bows and started to take aim and fire at will.

  “Move!” I commanded Daniel and the others.

  Arrows nipping at our heels, we raced downwards.

  By miracle, a few dozen yards of descending spiral staircase later and the five of us piled through the library exit without being hit.

  The guards were still on our tails so there was no time to catch our breaths. But, thankfully, we appeared to be in the home stretch. We were in the foyer of the Capitol now and the main entrance to the building was right in front of us.

  Our fortune did not last though. When we reached the giant doors we all pushed together, but they refused to budge even an inch. They either weighed a thousand pounds a piece (which would have been highly impractical), or they were locked.

  I glanced back and saw the first couple of enemy guards run out of the library and skid into the foyer. Wand clutched tightly, I lunged to go and meet them. But Daniel put his hand up to stop me. “Figure out how to open the doors,” he said. “I got these guys.”

  Daniel grabbed his sword and charged the two attackers. When he met them he immediately parried the first guard’s strike and then punched the opponent in the throat with his free hand. The guard stumbled back, disoriented, and Daniel took the opportunity to swing his blade around and trap the arm of the second attacker.

  Leveraging this guard’s weight against him, Daniel brought the base of his sword down on the rear of his opponent’s neck for a powerful blow—causing the trapped arm to twist, snap, and drop its sword.

  At that point Daniel forcefully kicked the first guard before following up with a cross-handed strike to the face that sent the assailant straight to the ground.

  Hmm. I had to say, if there was ever a time that I disliked Daniel the least, it would’ve been right then. The boy could fight.

  Confident that he had things under control, I turned my attention to the door problem.

  “There has to be a key or a lever or something,” Blue said, kicking the door angrily.

  “Up there!” I said, signaling to an area across the room.

  About sixty feet away there was a balcony with an unmanned guard pedestal—probably the gatekeeper’s post. There was a small red button on the wall next to it that must’ve been what unlocked the doors.

  Blue rolled up her sleeves. “Maybe I can climb some of those tapestries and—”

  “No need,” SJ interrupted.

  Before Blue could ask why, SJ had fired her slingshot. One of her portable potions hit the red button like a bullseye. The moment it did, pink smoke exploded and we heard a deadbolt inside the doors slide down—unlocking them.

  “Was that another sleeping potion?” Jason asked.

  “I believe so,” SJ answered. “But it is not important. We just needed the impact so I picked one at random. Now come on, before something else goes wrong.”

  “Daniel!” I yelled. “Let’s go!”

  Daniel took out his fourth guard and then bolted to catch up with us. He did so just in time too because as skilled as he was, he surely would have been overwhelmed by the seven more guards that poured from the library in the next second.

  With one final burst of strength, the five us pushed the doors open and sprinted outside to freedom.

  Just kidding.

  We didn’t make it halfway down the stairs before every member of outer Capitol security turned their attention and their weapons in our direction. If that wasn’t enough, the guards that had been chasing us came through the doors then and honed in on us as well. We were frozen on the stairs like statues. From every angle we were clear targets and had no plausible means of escape. That is, until we heard the roar . . .

  From behind us, a deafening, high-pitched noise that sounded part lion, part demon pierced the air. The entire city stopped in cold blood to see what had caused the disturbance and discovered it was neither lion nor demon, but a silver, medium-sized dragon. The monster soared over the Capitol’s cupola—coming from somewhere behind the building. His shadow darkened the stairs that led up to the main entrance until he plowed into the street just ahead of the roundabout.

  Great. As if we didn’t already have enough to deal with. Some rando dragon just had to be in the area and drop in on us too?

  Carriages were barely able to swerve in time to avoid being squashed.

  The dragon’s landing had been wobbly. He’d collided with the hind legs of the giant, gold dragon statue, causing a big clanging sound to echo around us. When the sound subsided all remained still and quiet for a moment. Then the silvery beast howled again and everyone else joined in.

  Screaming people took off running every which way as they yelled in violent alarm. Meanwhile the regular Capitol guards forgot about our group and began firing at the dragon in immediate, aggressive response.

  For a crazy split-second I felt kind of bad for the creature. It was like that griffin incident all over again. Poor guy wanders out of the forest into the city and gets pulverized for no reason.

  But then I caught a look at the size of the dragon’s
teeth as he violently thrashed his tail—shattering chunks of building and nearly killing a half dozen people in the process—and I felt less bad.

  Regrettably, the murderous guards that had been after us—while momentarily distracted by the dragon—lost no such interest in us as the commotion progressed. In fact, it almost seemed like the chaos heightened the resolve of their chase. Luckily the confusion unleashed by the dragon still created the perfect opportunity for us to lose them though, which we immediately took advantage of.

  We sped down the stairs with me naturally falling behind to bring up the rear again. (Evidently running away was not my thing in more ways than one.)

  The dragon began bounding across the traffic circle as he tried to evade the guards’ fire. His weight sent shockwaves across the street like baby earthquakes, causing me and countless others to falter.

  He roared again just as I was about to duck under the golden tail of the dragon statue. I glanced up and saw the creature’s distant face reflected in the metal just as he released a burst of flames from his enormous mouth.

  I looked back over my shoulder and saw that in the dragon’s attempts to defend himself he’d just roasted the stairwell of the Capitol.

  He was getting closer. So we moved faster.

  When we got to the section of the roundabout that poured into one of the city’s inner streets, we merged into the sea of frantic people trying to evacuate the area.

  It felt like everything was one noise now. The dragon’s roar, the people shouting, my heart pounding, Daniel up ahead yelling something about meeting at the carriage—it was all a blur of sound. But I was shocked back to reality when from within the crowd someone reached out, grabbed me by the wrist, and pulled me backwards.

  Spea—No!

  A civilian running by knocked my wand out of my hand before it had the chance to transform. As I watched it fall beneath the stampeding footsteps of a hundred terrified people my back was thrown against the wall of an adjacent alley.

  The force of the grab had been so strong and sudden that I lost my footing when I hit the wall—sinking to the floor upon impact. Not a full second passed when I landed on the ground, and when I looked up to find the blade of a sword an inch below my throat.

  The black haired boy from the Capitol was crouched at my level. He was leaning forward with one hand pressed against the wall behind my head and the other grasping the sword beneath my chin. He seemed a bit out of breath but just as confident as before.

  His face being so close to mine, I discovered two things.

  First and foremost, I finally knew where I recognized him from. He was without a doubt the same boy I’d envisioned in the bunker speaking with that cloaked girl during my fateful nightmare of days past. Which, I garnered, also meant that he was the same long-pondered-over, living, breathing source of the voice that had tormented my dreams for so many dreadful ages.

  Second, while such dreams had long been characterized by a wish to know the face of this source with more finite clarity, I now realized that this had been a foolish desire. Seeing him so vividly brought me no peace or closure. Rather, as I stared at every inch of his face, my heart sped with trepidation.

  This feeling was only surmounted by the painful sense that the nightmares I’d had of the boy thus far hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of the real ones he might be capable of bringing to my world.

  As I drew these conclusions I found myself unavoidably sucked into his deep, piercing eyes. They were far darker than I’d originally assessed. I mean, yes I’d already noticed they were black. But seriously, dang. Looking into them was like looking into two black holes or two really, really strong cups of coffee.

  But I digress, given that his dramatically dark eye color is not nearly as important as the fact that he is currently holding a sword to my neck.

  “Crisanta Knight,” he said.

  His voice at this proximity made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Hearing my name on his lips only made me feel even more creeped out.

  I gulped. “Um, yeah, hi there. Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” I replied, my eyes darting back and forth between him and the blade. “And you are?”

  He smirked. “Arian. And the pleasure is mine.”

  I glanced around the area. The alley was deserted and littered with a lot of broken bottles and crumpled, forgotten fliers. To my right was an empty grocer’s stand with an awning held up by two wooden poles. Next to it was a horse whose rear end faced our direction and whose body was tied to an empty produce cart.

  To my left were the streets. There were so many hundreds of distracted people gushing through them that no one took notice of us. My friends probably hadn’t even realized I was gone yet.

  Then I saw something catch the light a few yards away. My wand! It had rolled next to several bales of hay and was lying on the cobblestone street some eight or nine feet over. I began to slowly feel my left hand around on the ground behind me in search of a lifeline.

  If I can keep this guy distracted a few more seconds I might have a chance here. I’ve just got to keep stalling until I find what I need.

  “So. Based on the context I’d say you were about to try and ‘eliminate me,’ am I right?” I asked, trying to keep him talking.

  “Unfortunately,” he replied. “It really is a shame though.” I kept my eyes locked with his as my fingers found what they’d hoped to on the floor of the alleyway. I grasped the object carefully. “And why’s that?” I asked Arian as I tightened my grip around it.

  “For one, it was pretty entertaining to chase you around like that. After all, half the fun of the kill is the hunt, right? And second, well, you’re pretty easy on the eyes.”

  I smirked. “Poor choice of words.”

  At that, I swung my hand around and smashed Arian in the temple with a half broken glass bottle that my fingers had found on the alley floor.

  The blow was fast and powerful enough to knock him out of his crouched position. The second it did, I scrambled to my feet and dove for my wand. I picked it off the ground and spun around as Arian got back up. He was holding his face, which had a large cut carved into its right side around the area of his eye where I’d hit him.

  Spear.

  “Still think I’m easy on the eyes?” I asked him as my wand morphed.

  “You . . . you have a wand?” he said.

  “Correction, I had a wand.” I aimed the blade end of my trusty weapon in his direction. “Now I have a spear. Which I’m not bashful about using by the way, so I’d highly suggest you answer my next two questions. Who are you? And why are you creeps after me?”

  “You want to know who I am, princess?” Arian replied coolly. “It’s really very simple. I am the lucky antagonist charged with decreasing the number of problematic protagonists in the world. Now as to the reasons why I am after you specifically, they’re irrelevant. My team and I have our orders—we monitor for threats and eliminate them when they occur. It’s not my business to know the exact details. The simple fact is that your book’s prologue prophecy appeared a few weeks ago, Nadia gave the order, and here we are.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Who is Nadia and how could my prologue prophecy possibly be seen as a threat? It’s as lame and docile as they come.”

  “Oh, you poor, dumb princess,” he laughed. “You really have no idea, do you?”

  I wanted to ask him what he meant, but my attention was drawn away from his patronization. In my peripheral vision I saw a pack of cobalt helmet plumes making their way through the crowds toward us.

  The guards we’d been running from were almost upon me. I had to get out of here, now. But what was my strategy? If I ran, he would chase after me. If I fought him, the guards would get here in time to help him and they’d overpower me with their numbers.

  Once again I took stock of my surroundings to reconfigure my options. At my feet there were a couple more broken bottles. And above Arian there was that awning, which cast the alley
in shadow.

  However, I now realized that on top of the awning was an extremely large amount of produce—clearly intended to be loaded into the cart of the horse behind Arian. A horse that, based on the way he was jolting around, was clearly getting restless and increasingly perturbed by the chaos in the surrounding streets.

  I smiled. “I wouldn’t say I have no ideas,” I said in response to Arian’s snide remark.

  Before my newfound foe could lunge at me, I spun my spear downwards—catching its end on the inside of one of the half-smashed bottles. With another twirl all too reminiscent of the one I’d attempted back in Lady Agnue’s stables with the horse dung at the start of the semester, I flung the bottle at the rear end of the disgruntled horse.

  When it hit him, he whinnied and released a powerful back kick in protest, which snapped one of the wooden poles holding up the awning directly above Arian.

  Arian raised his eyebrows—obviously thinking I had intended for the horse to kick him and not the awning. “I hope that wasn’t for me,” he said mockingly.

  Wand.

  “No.” I shrugged and pointed upwards with my trusty weapon. “But this is.”

  The weight of the fruit being too much for the second wooden pole to hold up on its own, it snapped under the pressure of the awning and the hefty inventory came raining down upon my new enemy.

  I didn’t linger to enjoy the sight. The moment that first cantaloupe hit Arian’s head I turned on my heels and made a break for it—leaving him to be buried in the avalanche of fruit alone.

  For the next few minutes after that I just ran. I ran and I didn’t look back.

  Bobbing and weaving through the panicked crowds, I tried my best to concentrate on the direction I was going and ignore the screams around me and the distant dragon roars coming from somewhere behind. Of course, the latter became a bit harder to ignore when a giant shadow glided over the streets.

  Everyone and everything paused as the body of the flying dragon cast the city in darkness. He was circling over the capital now—letting out periodic roars, but not actually attacking. Honestly, from the way he was behaving, if I hadn’t known any better I would’ve said he was simply searching for something, not intending to terrorize the general public as our collective responses would’ve suggested.