Of Arrows & Daggers

CHAPTER TWO

Phil Drisdin is what some would call a walking piece of shit. He was a rather short man, with a roundly-shaped body. He had a knack for being a pain in the ass in every way that he possibly could: not giving allowance, not providing dinner, inviting his friends over for a game of poker on a school night. Pretty much everything he did was to get on the nerves of the girls in the orphanage, and he'd stop at nothing until he'd made them cry or storm off.

Charlotte had had a few girls she was close to run away, the conditions in the orphanage were quite hard to bear, no matter how strong and independent one thought they were. Families didn't come through very often, as most of the girls tended to be pretty old. Nobody wanted a damaged, temperamental teenager when they could get a baby fresh out of the womb with no trauma to keep them up at night. It was cruel, but Charlotte understood that that was how their world worked.

It just didn't make it any easier.

Charlotte threw herself onto her bed, the events from before bubbling back up into the surface of her mind. She'd forgotten to ask how magic and Katherine's royal status had anything to do with her. She was a relatively normal girl, perhaps just with a lack of social skills, but that was to be expected when you'd lived most of your life in an attic.

Even still, nothing in her life seemed to be out of the ordinary. She was one of the top students in her class, though she didn't think that said much about her intelligence, her school was quite dreadful when it came to the education part (she wouldn't exactly describe her teachers as scholarly). She was on the cheerleading squad, her small stature causing her to be assigned as one of the fliers immediately after tryouts freshman year. She wasn't the most popular, but she considered herself well-liked and acquainted. Overall, Charlotte considered herself pretty mundane.

The only thing she could really consider as something that set her apart was her abnormal condition. The doctors couldn't exactly diagnose it, but Charlotte described it as something between anemia and epilepsy. She hadn't had many episodes, as it was a more recent development in her health records, but it usually happened when she was under a considerable amount of stress, anxiety, or trauma. She'd feel her eyelids flutter, much like if she hadn't had enough iron, before she passed out. According to Katherine, the only one who's beared witness to an episode-- which happened just last week-- Charlotte would lose control of her body and suffer from intense seizing.

When Charlotte had woken up, she remembered nothing from right before or during the episode. The only thing she remembered was the look of absolute terror on Katherine's face. Back then, Charlotte had assumed it was just because she looked dead or pissed herself, but now she was starting to rethink her reaction. Perhaps this was her link to the world of magic? Did she pass out and become possessed by some evil spirit? Or did her body host some sort of angel?

She'd decided she'd seek Katherine out tomorrow, as tonight she had a project to do: sawing off the bottom of the fire escape outside Phil's window. She decided she could use a few more weapons, especially if she was going to become some magical demon hunter, which she assumed Ryder was.

Charlotte, tired from her slaying of a mythical tree-demon, drifted to sleep thinking about iron daggers and how she should start practicing knife-throwing...

†††

The next morning, Charlotte woke up to the sound of children screaming downstairs.

She groaned loudly, shoving her pillow into her face with excessive force. She didn't need to go downstairs to know who was making those noises, as the picture of the terror twins appeared in her mind. She imagined a target on their faces; perhaps they'd make good target practice.