Knights and Wizards

Running for my life was not how I imagined my first day of high school.

Let me back up a bit. My name is Ezekiel James. I'm just your average fourteen-year-old British teenager. I'm not the best-looking guy around but I like to think my caramel coloured skin and black hair accompanied by my warm, brown eyes gets the ladies swooning.
Anyway, running for my life wasn't on the schedule given to me by my mom. Then again, my teacher tried to kill me so I probably should have seen it coming. (More on that later)
The school my mom, Sophia James, decided to put me into was called George Harold Academy for Boys. Yes, you guessed it. It's a boarding school.
Now you're probably wondering why my mom would put awesome, amazing ME in a boarding school. Well you see, Mom's an archaeologist. No, not the Indiana Jones kind. (That would've been WAY cooler though) (PS: Don't tell her I said that.) She's more the "I've got to go and study a form of writing discovered in Ghana. They say it's from a time pre-dating the Romans.”-kind. She didn't want to disturb my studies so here I am.
Back to why I'm running for my life, though.
It all started on that fateful Monday morning. After dropping my suitcase in my new room, I popped my headphones onto my ears, turned Queen on to the max and went off in search of my home base classroom.
George Harold Academy for Boys was comprised of four buildings: the three-storey school building, the two four storey dormitories and a large gymnasium, which according to the school pamphlet, was where all sports activities took place.
I headed over to the school building. It was a warm yellow colour and the roof was covered in red tiles. The walls were peppered with the windows of each classroom. Once inside I took a left and passed posters that said things like: "This is your year!" and "No running in the halls."
Not long after I found where I needed to be: Room 103. It was the room that the information sheet said I was assigned to (Mom made sure I had everything.).
When I entered the classroom, it was completely empty except for a light skinned boy who looked around my age and a middle-aged tan skinned man. Both were eyeing each other menacingly.
The light skinned boy's blonde hair was cut so that it looked as though he was electrocuted.  His cold blue eyes bored into the older man, who I guessed was probably a teacher, as if he could kill the man merely with his gaze. The blonde boy was wearing the same George Harold Academy uniform I was wearing
The teacher was dressed, well, like a teacher. Brown blazer, white shirt, brown pants and funny looking shoes. What was odd about him, though, was his features. They were so animalistic it was frightening.  Instead of round pupils he had slits like a snake's eyes and his lips were pulled tightly across his teeth as if he was ready to pounce. His grey hair stood on edge like that of a feral cat as he stared at the boy.
The blond boy turned towards me, "You really chose the worse time to come into this classroom, Ezekiel.”
Then he turned back towards the teacher and hurled a ball of flame that appeared in his hand right at the teacher. The teacher was ready for this. He literally leapt over the blond boy's head and landed on the back wall of the classroom and stuck to it like a spider.
"You're quite foolish for a Legacy of Merlin,” said the teacher, in a voice that sounded as though it shouldn't have come from him, "But nonetheless, little girl, your little tricks don’t fool me. I will devour you and the boy before the sun has set. "
To say I was shocked is an understatement. My mind was doing a thousand loops over and over. A fifty - year - old looking man had just made a jump most Olympic athletes couldn't and then stuck to the wall like it was the most normal thing he'd done all day.
But being me, I took it surprisingly well....
Okay, that's a lie.
I fainted.
Yep. That's right. Not very manly. Not brave at all. But can you blame me? You might find this funny but trust me, if you were in my shoes it might have been worse.
When I woke up, I found myself lying on the floor of a chemistry classroom. I got up and noticed the boy from the classroom.
"What happened?” I asked, still confused.
The boy was standing over by the door and carefully looking out the door as if he was checking if there was any danger nearby.
"Oh, you're finally awake," he said while walking over to me, "How could you faint? You're a Legacy, aren't you? Legacies are supposed to be brave!"
"Hey man, I've never seen something like tha-," then it dawned on me. It was real.
Now personally, that level of weirdness should have been enough to melt my brain, but I guess the hits just keep on coming.
"MAN? I'm a girl, you idiot," the boy said irritated,” Oh, silly me. I forgot I was in this form."
He got up, closed his eyes and mumbled a few nonsense words and then he started changing.  His hair started growing towards the middle if his back into wavy blonde locks. His square face became softer and sharper. He also shrunk by a few centimetres.
Gone was the blond boy I saw a moment ago. In his place was a blond, wavy haired, sky blue eyed girl. She was wearing the school uniform, but it was baggier. The girl was about two centimetres shorter than me.
"I'm Elizabeth Glade, Legacy of Merlin."
My best reply? "What?”
"Clearly you were not informed of your heritage,” Elizabeth said, “We can speak about this in more detail once we've reached HQ. More importantly, where's your weapon?"
“What weapon?”
"In your pocket. I can sense it. "
The only thing in my pocket was a large ancient emerald coin. The one had an image of a tree on it and the other side a crest with three lions atop each other.  It was a gift from my father before he died. No don't get all sappy on me. He died before I was born so I never knew him. Mom never spoke about him that much except saying he how good a man and when Aunt Elaine (Dad's sister) came to visit.
I took the coin from my pocket and asked, "You mean this?"
“Yes.”
With her last word uttered, the teacher burst in through the classroom windows. Though calling him a "teacher" at that point would be inaccurate. He had a massive wolf-like head, covered in brown fur  and stood at least two meters tall with clawed hands the size of saucers. The only thing that helped me realize that it was the teacher were his eyes. It had the same animalistic eyes as the man from the class.
"Foolish little Legacies,” the beast said, “Today you die! "
Elizabeth immediately grabbed me by the arm and left the monster screaming in rage as we ran from the classroom and don't the corridor.
"We're going to have to kill it,” Elizabeth said as we took the stairs and went up to the second floor, the monsters roar growing louder and louder at our backs
"What is that thing?" I asked, “A werewolf?”
“Don’t be silly. Werewolves aren’t from Britain. That’s a Howler. They can change from their true form into human form tom to trick their prey. Which in this case is us. Though werewolves are descended from them."
“O-kay.... how do we kill it?"
"By lopping it's head off, duh!"
If Elizabeth did not have the reflexes she somehow had in that moment "duh" would have been the last word she ever spoke because as we reached the second floor a clawed fist erupted from the left wall that would've smashed Elizabeth to pieces. Instead, she dodged it by a hair's breadth. Me? Not so lucky. I got trapped beneath the Howler’s paw as the rest of its body came bursting through the wall.
"Well, well, well. Look what I've gone and caught,” he sneered down at me, “A nice little Legacy who smells a lot like the forest. Your sweet scent will be a good seasoning."
He raised his massive clawed fists over his head and brought them down to smash my head to pieces.
In the very last second before having my head smashed to paste, Elizabeth, bless her soul, tossed the large emerald coin, which had fallen out of my pocket when the Changeling burst through the wall, my way. She yelled something but I couldn't hear a word she said. I was too mesmerised by being on the receiving end of a direct collision course with a fist of death. But my body took over.
By some miracle, I somehow managed to wiggle free from the Howler’s paw and catch the coin. The coin felt warm in my palm.
“Flip the coin!" Lizzy yelled as the Howlers’ fist smacked her into the locker covered wall.
As instructed, I flipped the coin. I find it weird that I didn't wonder how flipping the coin was going to help but let's just be happy I didn't. What landed back in my palm DEFINITELY wasn’t a coin any more.  It was a sword. It was the most beautiful sword I had ever seen.
The blade was as long as my arm and it was the same deep emerald green as the coin. It reminded me of beautiful forests with succulent greenery.  The hilt was made of a delicate bronze and engraved so intricately that it would have been mistaken for actual wood from the trunk of an oak tree. There were roots growing around the hilt like creepers on a tree and started wrapping themselves around my hand as if to prevent me from losing grip on the sword.
Then I just went ballistic. Like ninja ballistic. To be honest, I still don't know how I did it. It's like I just KNEW what to do.
Instead of running away like a rational person, I rushed straight at Mr Howler. (Yeah that's my name for him. Might be a bad pun considering he was a teacher, but I just couldn't resist.) I dodged Mr Howler's left punch and dived beneath his right hook then followed by a "SHING!”. I slashed him across the right side of his back. Before he could recover, I was all over him like a ninja from Naruto. All I needed was a headband.
With a final attack worthy of Sasuke Uchiha, I slashed right through his neck which caused his head to land with a thud at his feet. His headless corpse fell to the ground with an ominous boom.
Elizabeth somehow managed to get up and with a shocked look said, "You'll make a fine Legacy yet."
I smiled with thumbs up and once again fainted.
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