Rainbow Magic (Dragon Rider #1) {EDITING}

Team Bonding

Callum was incredibly red-faced as they sat the warm waters, having already scrubbed themselves clean. Beatrice had been oddly insistent on washing his back, and other areas which had made the poor boy all but jump in the large pool of water to get away from her. Sadly, his plan hadn't worked much to the amusement of Sora and the redhead was now simply clinging to him as they sat next to each other in the bath – by which Sora meant they were sitting on top of one another, and more often than not it was Beatrice on top... if only to prevent her victim from moving.

Sora was only thankful Beatrice's towel was firmly fixed in place.

Callum's towel hadn't gone walkabout either. Well... the bottom one hadn't... the one he'd wrapped around his top half though was an entirely different matter.

"We need a hideout." Raelynn's words pulled her attention away from the budding couple – and there was no doubt they were going to be a couple. She didn't know how she could tell, but Beatrice looked far too happy with Callum in her grasp.

Silver stared at her witheringly. "Why?"

"To strategize, obviously," Sora said, ignoring the way the room seemed to darken. There were obviously a few faulty wires or something in the electrical system, and nothing would persuade her otherwise.

"Strategize?" Eisa stared at her, confusion written across her face. "What for?"

"To kill the necromancer, of course."

The silence which fell was eerie. She could've heard a pin drop.

"And why would we need to do that?" Eir laughed suddenly. "We're supposed to leave that to the higherups, aren't we? He's out of our league."

"Oh." Sora paused. "Didn't I tell you?"

Silver scowled. "Tell us what?"

"You know how teams who get cloaks have these specialisation thingies..."

Silver's smile was strained. "Yes."

"Ours is kinda... to kill the necromancer..." Sora grinned. "Didn't I tell you guys this already?"

Raelynn blinked. "No. You didn't."

"Oh, oops... my bad."

Silver glowered at her. "When did you find this out...? Wait, more importantly, who the hell told you all of this?"

"They're not lying."

"Why thank you for defending my honour, little Gold."

Sora nearly jumped out of her skin, hearing the Monster's voice. She hadn't been expecting it in the slightest. Usually the feminine voice only sounded when something major was happening, rather than when she was relaxing in the bath.

She didn't even have her cloak on.

"Who?" Silver asked, shuffling closer to her. "Tell me."

"My cloak," Sora said, edging away from the angry silverette. Yes, she could throw a mean punch and a kick, but she was more concerned with trying to keep her bandages dry.

"Your cloak?" She blinked. "Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that only your cloak seems to talk to you?"

"Mine does," Raelynn mumbled, her face only centimetres above the water.

"It does?" Silver stared at her in shock.

"Yep." She grinned. "Guess your cloak doesn't like you as much..."

"Oh shut up, would you?"

"Wrap up, would you?" Eir groaned. "Twin, they're worse than us when we get annoyed..."

"I know."

"Hey!" Raelynn yelled.

Silver plugged her ears. "Do you have to be so obnoxiously loud all the time?"

Sora sighed, sinking back against the cool tiling. She only had her legs in the bath, so she had no problems lying down without drowning herself. Silver and Raelynn were arguing about something, again, and she was too tired to stop them.

"So..." Eir turned to the two of them who weren't squabbling or sitting on one another. "What'd ya wanna talk about till those idiots snap out of it?"

"Well, Raelynn was muttering something about a base of operations or something." Eisa shrugged. "I think it'd be a good idea... y'know – thanks to that bombshell Sora decided to drop on us."

"I thought your cloaks would've mentioned it!"

"Well, they haven't," Eisa said.

Sora stared at the ceiling, admiring the engravings marked there, silently wondering about this secret base they were going to build. It had to be somewhat private, with decent space – since they'd probably end up doing crazy stuff with their cloaks... but they hadn't been in the city that long. They didn't really know anyplace like that. Sure, she could ask Oz, but that'd defeat the point. A secret base was supposed to be secret, and Oz wasn't part of their whole defeat-the-necromancer campaign. She didn't know where he stood in the whole scheme of things, and it confused her. Clearly he knew something, but what? He'd been rather tight-lipped about it... but then that was him in general.

Then she paused, her brain finally catching up to what her eyes were seeing on the ceiling. There were eight marks, painstakingly carved into the stone of the ceiling.

She recognised them.

There was no way she wouldn't.

"Umm... guys..." she mumbled, interrupting them all, pointing at the ceiling. "Do you have any idea why the symbols on our cloaks are drawn up on the ceiling?"