Chapter 52

52 To Find One Another Again

“Connor!” Nikki shouted, rushing over to me, quickly grabbing hold of me before the other person had time to attack me. “Are you okay?” she asked frantically.

I shook my head. I didn’t know how to answer her at all! But then suddenly, another blow struck my arm, making me scream in pain as if I’d been stabbed. “Malachi!” she shouted, with such rage in her voice as if she was about to commit a murdering spree.

To be honest, I was more scared of what was gonna happen next than the pain I had now.

I turned my body over to see what was happening, and Nikki rushed in there with rage and fury flowing from every inch of her being. I wanted nothing more right now than for this woman to stop. To calm herself down. To take a breath and let it go and get rid of it because it felt like she wasn’t even going to last much longer, not until she was eliminated.

The others charged as my vision blurred, and soon after that, everything turned black for a split second until my head finally came back down to the ground with a thud.

Everything was blurry, and I tried to blink my eyes open as my body shook with pain and shock, but it didn’t seem like any of it was working for me right now. I wanted to get up on my feet so bad but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move at all! And then, all of a sudden, I heard a loud crash.

“Nikki?!” I heard someone shout.

I turned my head to see who it was, but all I saw were shadows. A blur of movement. Nothing to actually process, really.

“N-Nikki?” I said out loud.

.....

Suddenly, I heard her voice again.

“It’s okay Connor,” she said, as she helped me up onto my feet.

I looked around, trying to find her but all I saw were more people charging towards us. “Quick follow me,” Nikki said, running into the forest where the other teams hadn’t reached yet.

I quickly followed after her while we both dodged the many stabbing wands flying through the air in front of us. She ran ahead of me with the speed of a cheetah, which made me realize how strong she was in a way.

Slowly the clashes of the wands and the whizzing of the powers slowly died down in volume, and there was no sound left behind except for the wind blowing across our faces.

We kept walking until we finally got to one of the trees and stopped there for a moment before turning to look back to see what happened to those who chased us. We didn’t know what had become of them; but they were probably gone, as if none of this had ever happened. Maybe that was just wishful thinking, but it felt nice to think that.

As soon as I realized this, I could feel it coming from within my chest as it began to pound, like I was being stabbed with a sword over and over again from my heart.

The pain was still excuriating but at least I could move now since my strength seemed to have returned somewhat, thanks to Nikki. But right now, all I wanted was to get far away from here because I knew Malachi wasn’t done yet. He would try something else!

“Let’s keep moving,” Nikki said quietly. “We can find some cave or something here.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea,” I said, as I stared out into the distance of the plains. There were no signs of life out there besides us two standing in the middle of nowhere. What was I supposed to do? Stay out in the open where he’d be able to come after us easier than ever? It was obvious that we weren’t going to make it in time back to where we stored our wands.

I sighed in confusion and worry.

“Do you think Tisiah and them are still alive?” I asked, sitting down on a tree.

Nikki sat down next to me and sighed.

“I hope so,” she replied. She bit her lip and sighed again before continuing, “It’s just too bad we won’t get to see them again for quite a tim.”

I nodded sadly in agreement.

“Hey,” she said, as she wrapped her arm around my back and pulled me close to her so she could look me in the eyes. “We’re still alive.”

I looked at her with a smile before shaking my head in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” she said with a smirk on her lips, “We’re still alive.”

“For how long?” I asked. “Clearly Malachi is going completely bonkers from this contest, and there’s no telling when he might change his mind about letting us go.”

“I don’t think he’ll do that.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well...” she began to say before pausing for a moment. “I know him pretty well. Well, know of him pretty well. He’s a person that doesn’t really spare anyone his anger or rage.” She sighed and turned her head towards me, “But that’s why I’m here with you right now.”

“Really?” I said with a laugh. “Because you know him so well?”

“No, not really,” she said as she rolled her eyes, “because you’re the only person I trust enough to stand by me even if we did die today.”

I laughed again, “Really? After all this time?”

“Yes,” she said, looking me straight in the eye.

I felt my face redden as I looked away from her. I had a feeling that if we did die today that I wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes anymore. She had such sparkling eyes, and it almost seemed more sparkling than September’s. I felt super weird, but at the same time it felt good to hear what she was saying to me right now, because she never had said anything like that before to me, but now it felt like she was doing so out of desperation, which made me feel better about it.

I looked at her again and smiled. She responded with another one back. But right at that moment, I heard very trudds of movement. I looked back, seeing someone that I really wanted to see since we ran our seperate ways.

“Tisiah!” I shouted, jumping up with excitement as I ran towards him while Nikki followed close behind.

“Connor!” he said happily, running towards us with a big smile on his face. He seemed like his usual self again. The Tisiah that always had a smile on his face, that was happy for everything life gave him and never complained about anything or anyone in it.

“How are you not dead?!” I asked, as we both stopped running and gave each other a big hug.

“Oh, it was a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be,” he said with a chuckle as he took a step back from me, “I knew that you’d be okay for some reason.”

“What made you think that?” I asked. “Well, Nikki,” Tisiah said, turning to look at her with a smirk on his face, “It was kind of obvious that you wouldn’t let him kill Connor.”

I felt myself blush as Nikki smiled and walked over to stand beside us.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to give a small smile.

“No problem, but unfortunately. Matt and Mari are out of the competetition,” he said sadly, as he looked down at the ground. “We had a little fun there for a while, but Malachi was just too fast for them to get out of the way and they lost their wands in the process.”

I felt myself feel sad as well but I didn’t have time for that right now.

“We need to find a way to take down their team, while still staying alive,” I said, taking a deep breath, “It looks like we’re not going to make it in time back to where we left our wands.”

“Yeah,” he said, “But there’s not much we can do about it right now. If we try to leave now without our wands, then we’re basically walking in there with our bare fists.”

Nikki nodded. “We need to get back to the cave and grab those wands, them we might have a chance.”

Tisiah shook his head slowly while he thought about what Nikki had just said. “If we do that, they’ll just attack us again. They’ll have to in order to take our wands away from us.”

“Yeah,” Nikki said, “Which is why we have to make sure we get them before they do that.”