Chapter Three

I woke up the next morning feeling very…peaceful. That sleep was the best I'd gotten in years. The bed really was comfortable, but some alarm clock on the bedside table was blaring at me and it wouldn't shut up until I got out of bed. Groaning, I gave it a death-look.

It didn't react.

After showering I realized I was still wearing my crummy old street clothes. Rifling through my closet, I found that this camp or whatever had supplied me with a new wardrobe. Who went to all this trouble? Honestly, were we really worth all that much?

So after I got dressed, I went outside to find Clara waiting for me. "Finally," she groaned. "Took you long enough!"

Before I even had the chance to speak, Dani jumped on my back. I grunted, trying to hold her up, but I failed and we both went crashing to the ground. She laughed, getting up, and scraping off her jeans. Instead of the deadly black it was yesterday, he hair was a dark red with a blonde streak in it. "Your hair's different," I noted.

She scowled. "My hair was originally blonde, you know. I wanted to dye it but we didn't hair any hair dye. Jonah, being the Mind Eternal that he is, made some for me. It didn't work, and now everyday my hair changes colour."

I couldn't help but break down laughing. Dani tried to get me to stop, but her attempts were futile. Eventually she just crossed her arms and scowled, but you could tell she was fighting laughter.

Fane came out of the dorms just then. When he saw us, his eyebrows raised slightly, but then he just shrugged as if he was used to it. "Today's the day," he said when we'd all calmed down.

"Today's the day for what?" I asked, getting off the ground.

"The five of us are here," he replied. "The god or goddess should be coming down and speaking to us."

I had forgotten all about the deity above. Would they come down? Were we that important? If we were still around then I supposed that we were, but what would they say?

"It's only the four of us, Fane," Clara said, trying to lift the tension. "Where's Jonah?"

"Oh, he's in class already," Dani said, waving her hand as if dismissing the idea.

"Already?" I exclaimed. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, he goes early every morning," Fane said. "He's the Mind Eternal."

"Exactly!" Clara sighed. "It's not his fault. What choice does he have in being a nerd?"

We all laughed again, before Fane checked a simple watch on his wrist and sighed. "We have two minutes left. We really should go. You know how X feels when we're late."

"Who's X?" I asked, though I had a feeling I already knew.

"The teacher," Clara replied. "You know, the one you've been waiting for."

I narrowed my eyes at her as we all made our way over to the School. "You know, the one you won't tell me about. I've never been to school, you know, so whatever happens here is going to be considered normal for me."

"Don't worry about it," Dani said. "All the knowledge that comes before sixteen – or tenth grade – is already in your mind. You just don't know it yet."

"Let me guess," I grumbled, "that's from that non-showing god."

"Or goddess," Fane said.

I just looked at him until he raised his hands in surrender.

We reached the School, and Clara opened the door without a sound, holding it open for me. "Uh-uh," I said. "You're going in first."

"Oh, relax," Dani laughed, going ahead and disappearing into the building. I sighed, following her. I found myself in another one of those lobbies, with a sign telling me where to go. It said to go to the Classroom to go up one level, so I took the door labeled "UP" and followed instructions.

The classroom was quite large. One table dominated most of the space, with five chairs. Dani and Jonah were already sitting in two of them. At the front of the room was a large whiteboard, and at the back cabinet upon cabinet.

But I haven't even gotten to the robot yet.

Oh, yeah, there was a robot. It was about my height, with a gray, square body and head. Its eyes were two beady looking objects, and its mouth a rectangular black hole. It had two feet and two arms, both so it could walk and carry things like a human.

Clara and Fane walked in behind me, Clara giving me a light bump on the shoulder as if to hurry me along. I did so, taking the end seat next to her. The robot, apparently called X (which made more sense now) walked out from behind a desk and to the middle of the whiteboard, gazing at us with seemingly sad eyes. "Hello," he sighed when he saw me. "Another one? Really?"

I just looked at Clara. She gave me a fake smile.

"Alas, what has Joel done to me now?" he grumbled. I don't know why I called the robot a "he" but it seemed kinder than "it."

"Joel built him," Clara whispered. I nodded.

"Today we're going to have a language lesson," X said. "You don't know this, but each of you speak a different language perfectly without flaws. This is 'programmed' into you, I suppose you would say."

He walked to Jonah, who was sitting at the far end of the table and said something intelligible. It sounded like a completely different language, which I suppose it was because Jonah responded in the same language. After speaking, he looked surprised that he had managed to reply. "You can speak Mandarin," X said, sounding bored. "All Mind Eternals do. You'd think someone would add something different once in a while, but no."

I was beginning to understand what Clara had been talking about.

Then he went to Dani, speaking in a similar manner. We discovered she spoke Japanese, and Fane spoke Arabic.

When he moved onto Clara, she immediately said "Ya sé lo que hablo, gracias."

X sighed, almost resentfully, and then moved onto me. I raised my eyebrows at Clara, but she only said, "I've been speaking Spanish for over a hundred years. I knew it came too easy."

X looked down at me, as much as a robot can, and said "This is so tiring."

"Why are you here, then?" I replied.

He nodded, and then walked to the front of the room. It took me a while to realize that I had just spoken in French.

"How are we ever going to know which language we're speaking?" I asked Clara. "I didn't even realize I was."

"It just comes naturally after a while," she replied.

"Thus ends the language lesson," X said. "Now we're going on to a Magics lesson."

"Is this like normal school?" I whispered to Clara. "Because it doesn't seem normal. You don't have a 'Magics' lesson at normal schools, do you?"

"I wouldn't know," she said. "None of us but Dani went to school before this, and she only went to a fancy girls' school."

I had a feeling normal schools were a lot more normal.

"There are a few things that any Eternal can do," X said, but his robotic bored tone was so inappropriate for a subject like Magic. "Like telekinesis."

"We know," Clara said, looking at X with bored eyes. "You've told us all before."

I looked at her with raised eyebrows. She sighed, and then corrected, "You've told all of us but Hope."

"And that's why I'm telling you again!" X exclaimed. Seeing a robot have such feeling, as annoying as it was, was just strange. "Would you rather she live in ignorance of her abilities?"

Clara sighed again, leaning backwards into her chair. "I suppose not. But you don't have to make me look like the enemy."

X politely (or not so politely) ignored her words. "Back to what I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," he said instead, shooting Clara a rude glare, "you can do basic forms of Magic, and advanced forms in areas you specialize in." He was pacing the room, but then he stopped in front of me. "Care to try?"

"But she doesn't know how," Clara interjected before I could say just that.

X sighed as best a robot could do. But once again, before I could say a word, Jonah raised his hand like the studious student he was. Surprised he had such good manners, X called on him like a normal classroom. "May I give her a demonstration, sir?" Jonah asked.

X waved his hand dismissively. "Fine."

Clara was stopped from saying anymore against X. I realized that Jonah had figured out how to deal with her outbursts by now.

"All you have to do is concentrate," he instructed me. "Just think about what you want to do. It helps to think about what you want to do in another language for me."

I nodded, grateful for a straight explanation. Jonah outstretched his hand, narrowed his eyes at a pencil on X's desk. After about a second, the pencil was raised into the air.

"Excellent, Jonah," X said. "See how long you can keep it there. All of you better be able to do this, too. Lift something else and keep it there."

Clara lifted up a pen in her pocket with her hand and held it up. X glared at her until she let it go, but the pen remained in the air, suspended by her mind. Jonah mentally brought his pencil over right in front of him, and Dani focused on a eraser on X's desk, while Fane had already brought over another pencil.

I thought about what Jonah had told me, and I thought about the red ballpoint pen on X's desk – or un stylo rouge, if you want to think about it in French – and focused all my thoughts on lifting it. To my surprise, it was raised into the air so easily I almost made it crash into the ceiling before I regained control and brought it over in front of me.

"Nice," Clara congratulated me. X had gone back over to his desk, rooting for a pencil or pen we hadn't stolen yet. "It took me a lot longer to master telekinesis."

I shrugged, twirling the pen around. "Maybe something else will be harder."

It was her turn to shrug. "We do telekinesis, basic spells…we even had a lesson on Charms once, but X didn't go into a lot of detail, so…"

"What's a Charm do?" I asked. We began to have a sword-fight with our pens in midair.

"Wish I could tell you," she sighed. "He didn't go into any detail, he just said they're out there."

"Charms enhance your magic," Jonah replied. He was making his pencil touch the ceiling and then the floor repeatedly, like it was doing gymnastics.

I knocked the pen cap off Clara's pen and it went flying, but she managed to take control of that too and she saved it from hitting the ground. "Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you," X called. He was still searching for a pen. "Whoever keeps their pen off the ground the longest gets a slab of my mocha cake."

Immediately Jonah stopped doing pen exercises. Clara mentally put the cap back on her pen and drew out of our swordfight. Dani and Fane were equally still. "What's his mocha cake?" I asked, trying to stifle laughter.

"It's delicious, believe me," Clara replied. "You want some."

For the next hour, we stayed like that, trying to keep our objects levitating. Once an hour and a minute had passed, however, Fane's fell to the ground with a small sound.

He cursed under her breath. "I lost concentration," he sighed.

"Go down to the Practice Room," X ordered him.

He stood up, going back to the door. "Dani's going to get it," he said, before leaving.

Clara was the next to go. She seemed a little more upset, whispering to me, "I never get the cake!" but she went where Fane had gone anyways.

I hate to admit it, but I only got third. About five minutes after Clara had left, something inside my mind just snapped and I saw the pen fall to the ground. "Impressive for a first try. But not good enough," X told me.

I picked up the pen and put it back on X's desk before going down to the 'Practice Room.' When I was back in the lobby, I saw a sign saying go straight for the Practice Room, so I went straight and found myself in a room even larger than the classroom.

On the left side was a basketball court, the middle a swimming pool, and the right had a tennis court. In the front, where I was standing, were two locker rooms – one for girls, one for guys – and a cabinet which probably held equipment. To the back was a small 25 meter track, and there was even a door going into a back room.

Clara and Fane were on the basketball court, playing one-on-one. "How is this possible?" I asked. "This room is way too big for the building's size."

"Magic!" Clara waved her hands mysteriously and almost got whacked in the head with a basketball. Glaring at Fane, she tossed it towards the net and landed it in with a whoosh.

"I love magic," I sighed.

The door behind me opened and Jonah came out. "Dani got the cake, like always," he said sadly. "One more minute and I would've…"

"What is the deal with this cake?" I exclaimed. "It's just cake."

They all stared at me like I'd just dropped from another planet. "It's not 'just cake'!" Clara replied. "It's so good…it melts in your mouth and tastes…just…amazing."

"There's got to be magic in it," Dani reasoned, coming through the door. "There's no way a robot could make a cake that good without some."

I nodded, slowly realizing that everything in this place involved magic in some way.

X followed Dani, coming into the room. "Today…today we shall do a circuit," he decided. "But first, we teach Hope the change-your-clothes trick."

Clara pumped her fist in the air. "Oh, I love this!"

Fane's face went beet red at the words. "What's this?" I asked nervously.

"You learn how to change your clothes with magic," Jonah explained. "It's handy for circuits."

"All you do is use your magic like before," Dani put in. "Just…be careful. After Fane's incident, we'd hate for that to happen again."

"Fane's incident?"

Nobody wanted to explain, so reluctantly I didn't press them.

"Think about your gym clothes," Clara said.

"I don't have gym clothes."

"Okay, one second then." Clara closed her eyes and whispered something. A sort of shimmer surrounded her, but her clothes shifted, changing from the shirt and jeans she had been wearing to a baggy violet tee-shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants. I blinked in surprise, but then caught myself because I really shouldn't be surprised by something that trivial after everything I'd seen.

"Now you go," she encouraged. "It's easy once you get the hang of it."

I sighed, wishing that if I managed this I wouldn't end up in something hideous, embarrassing, or…well, I didn't want to think about it.

"Okay," I whispered. Please change my clothes, I thought. I'd love to be in a purple tee-shirt and baggy grey sweatpants. Please.

I felt a slight tug, and then nothing.

I looked down slowly and sighed in relief. I was in a purple tee-shirt and baggy grey sweatpants. "Your shoes," Clara pointed out. I was still in flats. I thought about changing those to a pair of runners, and they did.

"You're good," Fane said, slightly jealous. "Mine didn't go so smoothly."

"Let's go off that topic," I suggested, realizing that my fears had come true for him.

"So what we're going to do is this," X said, walking out in front of me, Dani and Jonah. Clara and Fane came over and joined us. "First, two of you will start on the basketball court, two of you in the tennis court, and one of you with me in the back. We're going to keep rotating until you've all had a turn with me, and then we'll find Hope's weapon of choice, or weapons."

I tried to ignore that last sentence because it would only distract me.

"Hope and Fane, start on the basketball. Clara and Jonah, tennis for you two. Dani, come with me." X walked right into the back room, and Dani followed. What was back there?

"Start!" X yelled and closed the door, leaving him and Dani inside. Fane and I shrugged, and then we both ran over to the basketball court and played one-on-one for about ten minutes. X came back out, along with Dani and told us to rotate. Fane went to the tennis courts, Clara went with X, and I stayed on the basketball court playing Dani.

It stayed that way, me being the last to have a turn with X. When he called me in, I wasn't scared, because all of the others had gone in without difficulty.

There wasn't much in the room. It was wide and open, but on the sides were bookshelves and cases filled with random items – cups, books, wood pieces, picture frames, lamps, you name it.

"I'm going to throw these at you," X said naturally, as if he did this everyday…which he probably did, actually, so never mind. "Don't let anything hit you. You can use magic, you can dodge them, but if three items hit you you're out."

"These things can hurt, though," I protested, casting a wary eye to the steel padlock. "What if I get hurt? That's got to be illegal or something."

He looked at me, almost…amused? "There aren't any laws here."

Lifting the first teacup off the shelf, he tossed it at me. Using the telekinesis I learned earlier I knocked it out of the way mentally and heard it smash in the corner. I ducked the next one, and when he threw a lamp I telekinetically moved that one, too.

But he began to throw them more quickly and I began to realize that I couldn't keep up using just telekinesis. I remembered that Clara had told me we should be able to do basic spells. What if I could just explode it? Cast some fiery ball at it?

I looked at the object in his hand, that fearsome padlock, and thought, Destroy that! I outstretched my hand and as it was tossed through the air a black ball came out of my hand, wrapping around it and evaporating it.

I began to destroy more that way. I still used my telekinesis, but after discovering something more natural is was easy to use those black spheres. I also deduced they were black because black is the colour of Death. The others probably had different colours than mine.

We reached the end of the shelf. I had only gotten hit once on the shoulder with a block of wood I hadn't seen coming. "Good job," he said. "You discovered more magic with no education about it. Impressive."

I sighed. I was pretty tired after doing all that continually, but I was also pretty proud of myself. I thought I was doing fairly well for my first day, or at least what was expected. I was also pretty happy that I was handling all this information about me and not going crazy. I mean, just 24 hours ago I wanted to strangle Clara.

We walked back out. "Weapon time!" he called, and everybody stopped the circuit. X opened the cabinet I had seen before, but I was wrong – it didn't contain equipment. There was some gear, sure, but most of the space was taken up by weapons. There were swords, spears, daggers, bows and arrows, knives, machetes, and even a crossbow.

"Pick the one that feels right," X advised me. He walked over to the cabinet and removed the spear first. "Toss this across the room."

"I don't know how to handle one of those," I said, eying it wearily.

"It won't matter if it's what you're made for," Jonah answered. "Otherwise, try not to hit us." Fane's face went red again and I wondered just what had happened on his first day.

I looked at him. "Thanks," I said sarcastically. I took the spear from him, but I knew it wasn't "mine." It didn't feel right. I had no idea how to hold it. I tried to get it right, but when I tried to throw it I lost my grip and it just fell to the floor. I picked it up and gave it back to X.

"I don't think this is it," I replied sheepishly.

"No, I don't think so," he agreed. "Try these."

This time he gave me a bow. I was a little better at that, but my arrow nearly hit Jonah in the face. After deflecting it with his magic, he exclaimed, "What did I say about not hitting me?"

"Sorry," I replied, my face flushing. "I couldn't help it."

He acted like he was offended but I could tell he wasn't. It was probably this difficult for all of them.

After that I tried the sword. That was fairly easy, but I still couldn't get it right. After a moments consideration, X handed me two daggers.

Those I got. They felt just like an extension of my hand, and as I threw it across the room at the back room door like X told me to, I hit the target perfectly. "That's your weapon," he decided. "Daggers. Boring, like the others."

"I use daggers or knives, too," Fane said. "Jonah and Clara use swords and Dani uses a bow."

"You couldn't have gotten anything more exciting," X grumbled, but we all ignored him.

The rest of the day passed without incident. I felt a feeling of truly belonging, just like I had yesterday when Clara had explained everything.

It was bliss.

A couple of weeks passed. I learned to control my magic better, and was able to call the other Eternals true friends. Dani even time-traveled once, accidentally, five minutes into the future. That was strange for all of us, because she managed to get back and then we had two Dani's for a while until one of them inexplicably disappeared.

But the god – or goddess – didn't appear.

Not one sign, not one entrance, not one bit of hope to say they were still there. Slowly, we all began to realize that they had probably abandoned us. My being there didn't help. And we all came to terms with it, but we felt like we had been let down.

Because even though nobody said it, we knew now that we'd never have our purpose in life. It seemed we were doomed to be hunted by Raze forever.

But one day changed our views on that, because we learned that the Raze weren't our only fears. X had been educating us about them, but he'd stopped suddenly and sighed.

"I'm over-riding programming here," he told us gravely. "Joel didn't want you to know this, but I deem it necessary."

"You can do that?" Clara asked, but a touch of fear laced her normally confident tone. She respected Joel, loved him even, so something he didn't want her to know probably scared her more than she'd let on.

"There are more evil beings than the Raze," he continued, ignoring her question, which also meant his answer was a 'yes.' "There are lesser demons that are still dangerous."

"Like what?" I asked nervously.

"Imps. Dragons. Others without names," he said, shrugging. "If you can fight Raze, you can fight those. But they do exist."

"Why didn't you tell us that?" Clara asked, spreading out her hands, the fear gone. "That's nothing."

"Because the Raze command them."

That was what struck home. The Raze were bad enough – I hadn't actually fought one yet, but I'd had several training attacks when I was learning to use my daggers properly – but if they could command new legions of demons then we were in trouble.

"That's why we need the god to come down here!" Dani exclaimed. "They're not coming. We need them so we know what to do!"

I'd never seen her so mad. Dani was normally calm, going with the flow, just like time, her domain. "It's okay, Dani," I said, trying to calm her down. "They might come. And if they don't, we'll figure it out ourselves."

Clara was nodding grimly, Fane along with her, but Jonah was just looking afraid. Dani slumped back into her chair, defeat across her face.

"I thought you should know," X said before anyone else could start shouting. "How you deal with it, that's your problem."

He stopped talking about demons and refreshed our minds on the four poisons that could kill us. "Excuse me, sir," Jonah said, his voice quavering slightly, "can any of the lesser demons, as you called them, use the poisons?"

X shook his head. "Unless the Raze have figured out how, no."

"But don't the Raze serve somebody else?" Clara asked, shifting in her seat uncomfortably, trying to hide any fear that was coming back. "Who is that?"

"The Raze serve other Raze," was the only explanation she was getting. "Anything else is a direct programming violation and I would be forced to self-destruct."

Every time she asked a similar question, that was his response. Eventually, she leaned back, hissing, "I don't care if you self-destruct," but I think she did care, slightly.

After all, Joel had built X.

And what could we really do about it? At least we knew the information now. That was something.

But the god still hadn't come. "Dani's right, though," I said finally as we were in the middle of another pen-lifting exercise. "We do need the god to come."

"Or goddess," Fane interjected.

"Or goddess," I corrected myself after shooting him a look. "We don't know what else to do without them. They're supposed to help us, aren't they?"

"Yes, they are!" Dani cried, glad someone was agreeing with her. All our pens had crashed to the floor. "We need to know our purpose in life, and we're all here now. They should come!"

"We just have to wait," Jonah said, but he wasn't heard.

"Maybe you could do a Séance, Hope!" Dani said over him. "Call on her, you know."

I had only attempted one Séance. X had come to my Séance room and together I'd learned how to go into a trance and summon spirits. On his instruction, I got Albert Einstein to stand in the middle of the red star with me. All the old man had done was complain that X always made people try to summon him. I wondered what "other people" he had been talking about.

"They're not dead," I argued. "I can't."

Dani grumbled, muttering something under her breath. I didn't really want to know what she said, anyway.

"Pick up your pens. I'll give you all cake if you just be quiet."

That was the end of the conversation.

But not the end of our thoughts.