Aeria's POV

As I slept, I could feel the fear flooding my brain, then my body, but, asleep, I couldn't hide it or, at least, try to control it.

Looking around, I saw the empty lifeless forest that I found myself in every single night. The same ear-piercing shriek from every night sounded right before the dark fog started towards me and I started to run.

I don't know what I was running from, but I didn't want to find out, so every night I ran and ran and ran until I woke up, but tonight something felt different as I fell to the ground and continued running after seeing the darkness get closer. Suddenly, a warm feeling spread through me and it was like the darkness around me lifted just a tiny bit. For the first time in years, I stopped running and looked around me as color started to return to the area around me, strangely green was coming back more noticeable.

"Huh? Look at that..." I looked down at my feet to see a flower, a purple iris, blooming up from the ground, the first sign of life I'd ever seen in this dream. I was bending down to pick it when it shriveled up just before I could touch it and the darkness seemed to come back, even darker and more destructive than before.

"No no no no..." I fell to my knees and grasped my head as the icy feeling began to crawl its way into me.

"Yeeeesssss, let me into your heart..." A raspy voice sounded from all around me, but I shook my head and was about to start running again when I felt something cold and sharp pierce my back, keeping me trapped in place.

"You cannot deny your fate!"

"No!" I screamed before feeling like all the fight was being sucked out of me before I leaned forward to fall to the ground.

I sharply sat upright clutching my shirt over my pounding heart while drops of sweat beaded on my forehead despite the cool morning air hitting my face.

When I realized it was only a dream, albeit an extremely realistic dream, I took big, slow breaths of air to calm down before deciding to sit up against the wall. I looked over to the nightstand next to the bed and saw a small plate with some puffy potstickers, broccoli beef, and a fortune cookie on it.

Should I risk it...? I thought to myself before resolving to eat the cold, and slightly soggy, puffy potstickers.

When I was about to eat the broccoli, I hesitated hearing the voices of my younger self with my brother again,

Hey, at least now we have some food...

I don't know sis, most people judge us based on how we look and we look-

Dirty.

When I finished them, I cracked the fortune cookie open to reveal that my fortune was 'Someone special will change your life', but I just scoffed, crumpled it up, and tossed it back on the plate before checking a clock that was on the wall opposite to where I was sitting and read that it was 4:48 in the morning.

"Time to start the day, I guess." I told myself and I put my hair up in a ponytail using an elastic band I kept on my wrist all the time, leaving my bangs in front of my left eye. I hesitated to open the door, thinking I might still be locked in this room like a wild animal the ninja were trying to contain, but, to my surprise, the door opened. I didn't hear anyone so I decided to look around to make sure the coast was clear before leaving the room.

These ninja must have some kind of training equipment, right?

I thought to myself as I wandered the halls as quietly as a shadow, shivering at that metaphor being used in my mind.

I stopped at a door with a sign on it that had a silhouette of a person making a kicking motion. I opened the door to find that there was a variety of mini spinning obstacle courses, a wooden beam to practice balance, and various weapons from katanas to swords to shurikens lined up in rows on a wooden rack as a painted target was on a wall. Finally, I found the training equipment I was most comfortable with; a punching bag.

Sadly, I didn't have my boxing gloves with me, but I felt the urge to hit something so I just punched it with my bare hands.

My bandaged hand stung in protest, but I continued to punch the bag with swift, hooking motions. As I did so, I thought back to when I was a kid and had to do this as a part of my self-defense training, remembering to find the weak spot and exploit it so I began to punch even harder at the area of the bag that looked to be wearing thin.

I spent what felt like forever doing this until I, eventually, got tired and looked around at the other training equipment the ninja had. My exposed eye landed on several bows in a box with a quiver of arrows. I had sworn to myself, ever since that day, that I would never pick up a bow and arrows ever again, but it was so tempting, until I thought about why I could ever use the bow again and the rage that went with it came out of me in the form of a furious yell and I swung my fist at the bag again to where the seam fully split and my fist got buried into the sand that spilled onto the floor around by hand.

"Aeria?" I whirled around after pulling my fist out from the bag to see the ninja with blonde hair wiping his uniform-matching eyes sleepily and was still wearing his green gi from yesterday, "What're you doing up so early?"

I stared at him with a suspicious look and simply shrugged, not giving a reply.

"Your hand... and the punching bag..." He pointed down to my hand as the bandage was starting to peel off, revealing the cuts the splinters had left and were bleeding slightly so I hid it behind my other hand as his gaze moved to the ruined piece of equipment before redirecting back to me.

"You should really rest that hand until it heals."

"No kidding, green bean." I grumbled as I tried to tighten the bandage around my hand.

"My name is Lloyd." He tried to offer his hand for me to shake, but I just looked at it while making my 'are you being serious right now' face and he retracted his hand slowly.

"Why are you up so early?" 'Lloyd' repeated his question.

"I always get up early to train, but I don't have my gloves with me so I just did it with my bare hands." I finally admitted when I got my bandage tightened around my hand.

"Do you want me to take you to get your stuff? Since you're going to be staying here for at least a little while?" He offered.

"Why are you helping me, aren't I your prisoner?" I snapped at him, but, to my surprise, again, he shook his head calmly and said,

"We're trying to keep you safe. Pythor isn't someone you want getting to you, but he's not going to be a problem anymore, at least for a while." I felt my anger go down for a second before I answered,

"Then, sure."

"Come on, let's go before the others wake up." Lloyd walked out of the room and I followed him to the main deck of the flying ship I was on, seeing that it was still dark outside.

"How exactly are we going to get back to Tozmachi from here?" I asked and my answer came when Lloyd got up onto the edge of the deck and jumped down without a word.

"Lloyd!" I quickly ran to the edge, expecting to see him hurtling towards his death, but was shocked to see him rising back up on a dragon that seemed to be made of light.

"Where did that come from?" I asked him as I got a good look at the green dragon.

"Elemental dragon, comes in handy sometimes to get somewhere fast." Lloyd sheepishly grinned as he held a hand out to me, but I just climbed on without his help.

"Hold on, we're gonna go really fast." Lloyd warned me before snapping the reins and the dragon took off speeding toward the direction of Tozmachi.

Abruptly, I grabbed his shoulders and stared down at the ground as it blurred by and, eventually, we went so high up, the clouds surrounded us from all sides and below

"Cool." I smiled a little as I let one hand brush against the clouds.

"You wanna see something really cool?" Lloyd turned his head to face me and I must've nodded in my adrenaline rush because he made his dragon do a loop-the-loop right through the clouds to the ground where it was, suddenly, dawning to the morning.

"Wow..." I breathed, still smiling, as I saw the sun peeking over the horizon and Lloyd had whispered,

"Yeah..." He turned to look at me again, but I managed to snap back to reality and straightened my face as Lloyd frowned a bit before announcing,

"We're here."

Sure enough, Tozmachi was right below us and Lloyd landed his dragon a couple of feet away from the border of the town and it disappeared from underneath us.

Fortunately, I managed to somersault when I hit the ground and landed on my feet as Lloyd and I stood at the entrance of Tozmachi.

1589 Words