After playing a few more board games it was time for dinner, while everyone else ate the reheated leftovers from lunch the winning team was gorging themselves with homemade pizza, Ian included.
Getting a delivery all the way from the city was an impossibility, so the teacher's had come prepared.
Yet dinner was cut short as the calm night sky had suddenly turned rainy, making everyone scramble to put everything back inside the cottage and go back to their tents for the night.
Inside a specific blue tent were Gareth and Max, their wet clothes were placed over their backpacks in a vain attempt to dry them. After settling down for the night and already inside their sleeping bags they decided to talk for a while to kill the time.
"So, I've been wanting to ask this for a while... For how long have you and Vitria been friends for?" Max asked as he put down his phone.
"Oh man, Since... Forever? Atleast as far as I can remember, our parents we're friends even before we were born too." Gareth responded as he reminisced.
"Oh right, I also wanted to ask you some stuff. Like, have you tried searching in the internet for anything about your power? I tried, but everything that comes up is that you might have a very bad disease or you're poisoned, which as you can imagine doesn't fit at all." Gareth asked as he showed Max an article about yellow blood he found.
"Yeah, that's all I saw when I looked it up too, I even did a reverse image search but it's still the same. Maybe I'm the first with this thing?" Max said as made the vein-like lines appear on his hand.
"That's pretty unlikely... I mean, what Elements are your parents? And your grand-parents? Maybe that has something to do with this..." Gareth asked as he made a note on his phone to look up an an article later.
"Uh... My mom is an Earth Elemental, My dad is a Fire Elemental, From mom's side its Plant and Earth, From dad's its Fire and Magma." Max said.
"Oh... Wait- Maybe you're a Thri-Elemental! That's why your powers are so weird... but what's the combination of Fire, Earth and Plant...?" Gareth responded as he made another note on his phone.
"That would make some sense... But can't Thri-Elementals control all the elements they have? I can't use Fire or Earth though..." Max replied.
"That's true... I need to do more research on this..." Gareth said as he added more notes on his phone.
After a slightly uncomfortable amount of time for Max, he spoke up again.
"Uh... So... What's your favorite color?" Max asked to keep the conversation going.
"Oh, It's chartreuse, what about you?" Gareth said as he put his phone down.
"It's purple... Your favorite video game?" Max asked again.
"Wasteland Woes, It's the best and hardest RPG I've ever played!" Gareth replied with enthusiasm.
"Oh, I've always wanted to try that one! I heard you can have a farm full of sentient animals, is it true?" Max asked, sharing the enthusiasm.
"Yeah, you can do even crazier stuff, like-" Gareth started explaining as the rain continued to fall, what was supposed to be a chat to kill the time turned into a full blown discussion, with topics like which Elemental Beasts they could take on in a fight with prep time and funny stories to what was the best flavor of ice cream.
A very enlightening talk later and noticing it was almost 1 AM Max and Gareth decided to call it quits for the night, after saying goodnight and turning off the lantern inside the tent they went off to have sweet dreams, except they weren't so sweet for one of them...
When the rain outside had suddenly turned stormy and lightning crackled in the distance, almost everyone was too asleep to notice, Max included, yet the sound of lightning and violent winds had suddenly set off an... unpleasant memory.
...
He was there again... The same forest, the same storm... The same bloodied hands.
Small and fragile, like those of a young child, yet the crimson liquid coated their palms... soiling them.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
He felt the warm liquid go down on his hands and into his arms as he looked at them, in one of his palms was a familiar necklace, a rectangle-shaped purple gemstone with the letters "B + L" engraved.
The storm raged violently while the winds howled in grief, yet the shadow in the treeline continued to stalk him.
It's cold eyes shone with glee as it inspected its prey, a young Rowan, when he still went by that name, his hair was a reddish orange with a few streaks that retained their original vibrant red, he had a lost look on his face as the body that lay on the tree right besides him stayed still and unmoving, he didn't dare look...
Things... Had gone differently in reality, that's how Max knew this was a nightmare.
One he was all too familiar with...
Everything turned deathly still for a moment as the shadow lunged at Max, it's beak open wide and ready to swallow its prey, yet Max stood still and closed his eyes... he knew how it would end.
Max suddenly woke up as tears streamed on the sides of his face and into the pillow, He violently got up and looked around, thankfully, Gareth was gone and the entrance to the tent was closed... explaining the situation would have been awkward.
Normally the nightmare wasn't so... vivid, just a few moments flashing before his eyes and he woke up in a cold sweat, nothing this... Real.
It felt like he was there again, in the flesh. The cold rain, the howling wind, the warm blood...
...
Max quickly cleaned the tears from his eyes and tried to recompose himself while looking at his hands, they were clean and warm, if a bit calloused thanks to all the training with his poleaxe, there was nothing wrong with them, Yet... He could still feel it...
•••••
A few minutes later Max was out of the tent, he looked like he hadn't slept at all as his reddened eyes inspected the clearing.
He smelled the moisture in the air and felt his shoes get wet with the dew on the grass, the blue sky was almost cloudless, as if the storm from the past night hadn't happened at all.
The foldable tables had been taken outside again, some students were having breakfast in them, eating cookies from a bag while drinking tea and coffe from cheap and visibly cracked mugs, yet everyone looked happy as they chatted away...
Max went to the teacher's to get some tea and then walked over to where Gareth and Vitria were sitting, they looked at him with concern and started asking questions the moment he sat down.
"Hey... You don't look so hot, did you go to sleep by dawn or something?" Gareth asked first.
"Yeah, did you even sleep? You look like a zombie..." Vitria added.
"I went to sleep at the same time as Gareth, it's just that... it wasn't a good sleep, I'm not used to sleeping in a sleeping bag so I ended up waking up in the middle of the night and had to readjust myself..." Max didn't necessarily lie, he was just giving one of the reasons rather than all of them, yet he still felt bad about it...
"Oh... Yeah, if you're not used to them it's pretty uncomfortable..." Gareth said as he dipped his cookie on his tea
"Mhm, The first time I went camping I had back pain the whole day after sleeping in a sleeping bag, it was torture..." Vitria said as she finished her tea.
After chatting for a while more they were interrupted by the Teachers who had an announcement for them.
"Alright! Yesterday was a good start, but don't you think all the activities in this camp will continue to be that easy, No Sir! That was just to get your engines revving up, but a taste of the real thing you may say, today is where the true adventure starts! For the first activity... You will sustain yourselves only with what you manage to catch, find or steal until this camp is over, I hope you liked the pizza because until this is over you won't get any, this breakfast was the last thing we will be giving you, so I hope you enjoyed it!" Mike snickered as the students started freaking out, our trio included.
"That's not all! From now on we will be hunting you down too, like how an Elemental Beast would, all of you have 3 lives, lose them all and you will be taken out of the test and be given a 0% as a score... And don't think about cheating, we have this whole forest under surveillance, stealing will be permitted, and even attacking eachother will be allowed under strict limits, but whoever goes for the kill will not only get expelled, they will also have that written down on their permanent record, staining their future forever." This time Mike's tone turned serious and cold as he looked at all the students.
"You will be allowed 3 hours to get everything you may need from the camp and get as far away as you wish, after that it's free game for all of us teacher's to find you, and I assure you... we will. If we find you out and touch you that would count as losing a life, after losing a life you have a 1 hour grace period were all of us will ignore you, but after that you're prey again." Mike grinned at the students as they shuddered.
"And... I guess that's all, Let the games begin!" Mike put an arm up to show a timer of 2 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds had started on his phone, making his message clear.
All the students remained absolutely still for a few moments as the words Mike said were slowly processing on their minds.
"What are you waiting for?! The clock is ticking!" Mike's screaming got them out of their trance.
What came after that was an absolute scramble as everyone tried to get their stuff from their tents along with anything they may need.
Max and Gareth barely managed to get out of the stampede with their things semi-intact, they had decided to take the lantern from their tent along with the sleeping bags, taking the whole tent would have taken too long.
They met up with Vitria, she had tried to get Susan to join their team but the few water Elementals were worth their weight in gold in that situation, so she had coincidentally joined the group made up of mostly rich kids, to Vitria's dismay and envy.
After meeting up they decided to get the heck out of camp as fast as they could, not looking behind them for even a second.
"This is going to be a nightmare..." Max thought outloud as the group ran away.
"Don't have to tell me twice..." Vitria responded with a sigh.
"Hey, Atleast it's gonna be fun..." Gareth added as he chuckled.