𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕚𝕤𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕚𝕝𝕧𝕒 ― ♛

Of course, she was fucking running.

Aleks had expected it, and his long stride didn’t even have to break into a jog to keep up with her. She was swift and fast, he would give her that and it was most likely her Silva heritage breaking through. He could only imagine what she would be like once she was returned to her home world -- where the limitations and barriers of this one hindered even his own power and potential. He could hear her panting breaths, the slam of her shoes against concrete, practically screaming her location to him as he continued to follow her through the campus until they reached a populated courtyard. He rounded the corner just in time to see her rush towards a large group of students, waving her arms frantically, her voice nearly out of breath.

He only waited, knowing there was no one who could help her.

The slam of the doors behind him echoed across the courtyard, as if it were a toll sealing her fate. He watched the other students attempt to peer over her shoulder at him, only to find nothing but air. Aleks watched them laugh and dismiss her, shrugging off her pleas for help easily, which in return only caused the princess to break into a run once again.

He cursed under his breath and rolled his eyes before he started following her once more.

She had run right towards the iron gates that sealed in the campus, not exactly a smart move and a tactic he would surely have to warn her about once they returned to Silva. Since she had cornered herself against the bars, it didn’t take long for him to close the distance between them -- to appear right behind her on silent footsteps. To face his future queen with a sneer on his face as shadows threatening to pool across his body.

Gotcha.

He was over a foot taller than her and he could have sworn his neck was the size of her thigh. Such a small, frail little thing. How she would survive in her homeland, Aleks had no clue…

As she warned him to stay away, he could only curl his lips into a smirk. She had spirit, he would give her that. “You need to come with me,” was all he told her, deep voice laced with power and warning. He didn’t want to play this game anymore and they were running out of time. The longer he stayed here… the harder it would be to return to Silva once again. And he had no desire to stay in this rotten cesspool of a world. Even though his own wasn’t much better, he at least was able to stand at his full potential and not some shell of the creature he was here.

She wouldn’t come easy, he figured that much. So, pulling back his hood and revealing the sharp, determined planes of his face, Aleks bent down and wrapped his arms around her legs, only to hoist the girl up onto his shoulder. Thrown over him like she was nothing more than a sack of flour. “Sorry, Princess,” he murmured without any hint of regret and quickly turned on one heel, ignoring her outbursts that rattled through his ears. Water… he needed water to conjure another portal.

Aleks turned away from the wrought iron fence and began to trek towards the garden behind the ancient building, all the while attempting to keep his hold on the flaying girl across his shoulder. He gritted his teeth and quickened his pace, ducking into the shadows and brushing through the foliage. He was given an order to retrieve her -- not to make nice with the girl. She was nothing more than a chance at his freedom, and he wouldn’t risk it.

They came upon a small pond filled with koi fish of various colors. He dug into the belt across his waist, searching through a small pocket until his hand landed on a thin, pencil-like device made out of obsidian. His moonshard. With one hand, he bent down to the water and gently pressed the tip onto the surface while whispering the portal commands in the ancient, Silvian language -- something that had been dead for thousands of years, except for the Drache. The water immediately froze over, although the koi beneath continued to swim freely, unknown of what was occurring on the surface.

Shoving the girl off of his shoulder, not bothering to catch her landing, Aleks leaned towards the water and whispered one more word.

“Silva.”

And then the water cracked. And cracked. And cracked. Spreading the earth apart, shattering the pond completely.

Aleks couldn’t help but smile. He still had it.

He then glanced over his shoulder at the lost princess before wrapping his arms around her once more and holding her squirming form to his chest. A little unprofessional for his own kingdom’s princess, but they were running out of time, as well as his patience. He would be able to explain more once they were back on home soil.

With her against him, Aleks finally allowed himself to glance down at her eyes, to see the fear in them. He once drank terror like water, thrived on the unknown like the monster he truly was. His grey eyes flashed as something that had once been so dormant inside suddenly rekindled. Fire ignited within his chest. The dragon had been awakened.

And he was ready to go home.

He didn’t give her another glance as he flung them both through the portal, leaving the human world once and for all.

The students gathered around the windows chattered amongst each other about the current incident. They were probably waiting to watch Mr. Birkholz scurry over to his flaming vehicle with a fire extinguisher. Vaia on the other hand had already turned herself around and made a bee-line towards the door across the room. She wasn't sure what had just happened, but she didn't care to find out.

She could hear Payton behind her, calling her name, but she didn't turn around. Instead, she stepped through the door. Had that been her? She thought to herself as worry consumed her. She looked over her hands, trying to understand the feeling that had overwhelmed her earlier. The feeling that led to a strike of lightning.

Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed Payton was collecting her things from her desk and Vaia took advantage of the distraction, stepping forward to walk down the hallway when a new feeling hit her like a brick wall.

Her brown eyes slowly lifted from the tiled floors and landed on a dark and hooded figure. Her stare locked onto where his face would have been, only the bottom of his chin was barely visible behind the shadows of his attire. Her feet suddenly felt like they were melted to the floor with hot glue and a cold shiver ran down her spine, lifting every piece of hair on her body straight up. It felt like she was close to electricity like static was all around her.

Vaia's hands grew weak, her books tumbling to the floor, spewed across the hall. She could feel eyes on her now and when she stole a glance at her fellow classmates spewing out the door around her, she noticed they weren't paying any mind to the mystery man in the hall. Almost like they didn't even see him standing there. How could they not? The guy had literal weapons strapped to his back on campus. Several, actually.

Although she couldn't see his eyes, she knew his gaze was locked onto her. Vaia tensed up, wishing her feet didn't feel so heavy. She willed them to move, screaming inside her head. It was when he took a step towards her that everything hit her. Her feet shifted slightly and she caught the breathe she hadn't realized she'd been holding in the whole time.

Twisting on her heel, she broke into a run, no longer caring who was staring at her as she did. Was this her going completely insane? Was this a dream? Had her alarm never gone off? WAKE UP! She thought to herself as her chest rose and fell heavily with every footfall.

Rounding a corner, Vaia suddenly wished she would have taken her gym classes a bit more seriously in high school. She didn't risk a glance back, her legs carrying her willessly towards a set of double doors leading out to the courtyard where she knew there would be several people. Someone had to help her.

Her converse slapped the pavement as she stepped outside, her hair a mess. She darted her eyes around, panting as she took a moment to catch her breath and figure out her options. All around her, several students shot her confused glances and she pushed herself to head towards a group of people.

"Please," she breathed. "Please, there's a man chasing me." she stared between them and they all looked at her worriedly before looking behind her, then back at her.

Vaia furrowed her brows together, defeated and she turned to look over her shoulder, watching as the doors flung open, revealing the man from before. She could feel his presence like she'd never felt anything. Vaia pointed towards him quickly.

"That's him! That's the guy! Please," she spoke eagerly and the group simply began to smile at one another, shaking their heads.

"Who?" one girl questioned.

"Lay off the drugs dude," one of them laughed and she could feel fear flooding her. They actually didn't see him. . .

Without another word, she took off once more. This time she went for the gates that closed in the courtyard. The closer that she got, the more trees and shrubs there were. She could barely see the gates behind the foliage, but once she reached it, she realized it was locked closed. She would have to climb. Her fingers curled around the old lock and her lips pursed. Vaia swallowed roughly before turning and pressing her back to the fence.

It was when his figure appeared in front of her that she felt her body give in. She trapped herself.

"Who the hell are you," she tried to keep her voice stern but failed miserably. "Stay away from me," she warned, even though she knew damn well she was underequipped for this fight. Her eyes shifted over his blades and she felt like her heart was ready to fly out of her chest.

She really couldn't catch a break, if it wasn't her at-home life, it was her education too. Only this crazy person couldn't be stuffed away in a mental institution if no one could see him but her.

This was the first time Aleksander had been sent to the mortal realm.

And it would certainly be the last.

He wasn’t given much to go on -- just how the void between worlds was a rampant, beastly thing. How it could suck one away and twist time and life if you weren’t careful. Being a Drache, his power was somewhat steady when opening portals. He may have been able to do so on his own accord, but the magic the king had thrust upon him was constricting. Suffocating. Next to the deep, prominent scars across his back from the whippings he had taken while prisoner, were inky swirls of an ancient language belonging to Silva. It was also a spell that bound him to the king. If Aleks so much as stepped a toe out of line, the tattoo would ignite, sending searing bursts of pain through his entire body -- a fateful reminder that he was nothing but a pet and not the powerful warrior who took to the skies so many years ago.

Even with the thick hood shadowing his face, he shied away from the sun as he was thrust between worlds and shoved into this one. A light layer of sweat covered his pale skin and Aleks was panting, for traveling into the void felt as if his limbs were being pulled every which way, that his body was no longer his own and that his soul had been sucked out of every pore. It wasn’t the greatest feeling and he surely wasn’t looking forward to doing it again.

Portals into the void were usually opened through water or mirrors and you would land at the closest one out of the two once reaching your destination. Unfortunately for Aleks, that was the rearview mirror of a small, red vehicle in a parking lot. He felt himself being thrust onto the concrete, a searing lightning bolt claiming his entrance and also destroying the car as he landed crouched on his feet, one hand placed on the pavement to steady himself.

It was the first time he had seen the sun in 200 years, and it wasn’t even his own.

Flames erupted behind him, but the Drache was unscathed due to his heritage. His eyes scanned the area, a scene he did not find any familiarity with except for the trees and the sky. Even the air was different -- sour, in a way. Aleks quickly tried to ignore the strange objects. Metal and wheels, the impractical clothing, and not to mention the small rectangles most of the mortals were holding in their hands. Of course, they couldn’t see him, only the lightning that announced his arrival. Unless one was Silva-born, they were clouded by a magical mist to mortals, practically ghosts.

The weight of the twin blades strapped to his back was heavy as he started forward. She had to be close… He landed here for a reason. He lifted his head, face still covered in shadow by the hood, and scanned the area. While he had no clue what the lost princess looked like, he figured it would be fairly easy to track her. Like calls to like, after all, and he was pretty certain that she would be the only one staring at him. Aleksander’s presence didn’t exactly blend in. Maybe it was the swords, maybe it was the towering height, or maybe it was the other stray weapons sheathed to his midnight clothing that certainly did not fit into the fashion standards of humans.

With his head still lifted, Aleks then scanned the large building in front of him. In the windows there were students, scrambling to see the flames consume the vehicle behind him. A pull dragged him towards the door, an itch that he couldn’t quite scratch, and he followed his intuition and into the brick structure. His face was set into a raw form of determination, not taking any second glances to admire the other mortals, how frail and disposable their lives were -- how mundane and meaningless their problems seemed to be. They spoke the common tongue, even here, but without the thick, seductive accent the Silva acquired.

He climbed the stairs one by one, students effortlessly dodging him due to the mist infiltrating their minds. Walk over there, take that step, move your arm that way… Laughter and conversations ran wild as his footsteps echoed one by one, that pull growing more and more prominent with every step. She’s here… She’s close…

More students began to file out of their retrospective classrooms, flooding the stairwell. His pace quickened and he reached the next floor, following the path he was given, falling prey to the magic of the king again. Aleks turned a corner, and then another, trying his very best to avoid the oddities and strange structures -- the lack of foliage and the missing tinge of magic that seemed to linger on every particle in Silva.

Suddenly, his feet stopped. Suddenly, his body was nearly thrown back with the onslaught of recognition of someone he had never met once in his life. She stepped out of a classroom, books in hand and worry on her face…

And then looked at him, a whole new sense of fear hitting her.

Aleks didn’t react, not even as she continued to stare, how she froze in place and her books tumbled to the floor, snagging the attention of other students. She saw him -- but no one else could. This was her.

He cocked his head to the side in a predatory way, assessing the girl, before he took a step forward. Obviously that was the wrong move on his part, for at the slightest bit of movement from him, she took off running, disappearing once again. Aleks cursed lowly and rolled his eyes and started towards her, that intuition leading him once again.

You can run, but you can no longer hide...

Life had never been necessarily normal for Vaia, but the most iconically strange memory she had occurred fourteen years ago on her sixth birthday. It was also the last day she'd seen her mother. She could remember the incident like it was just yesterday. The way the air smelt, the dress she wore, and the pure hatred held in her mother's eyes.

Vaia could remember on several occasions where she would catch her mother staring at her across the room, her eyes void of any compassion. She looked at Vaia as though she was a stranger in her home. An intruder. Vaia never really thought anything of it until her aunt Maggie was tearing her mother away from her when she had swung a large kitchen knife at her throat. Her older brother, Noah, wrapped his arms around six-year-old Vaia, hiding her face in his chest as he watched in horror as his aunt yelled at a relative to call 9-1-1. The echo of her mother's voice screaming "she's not mine! that's not my daughter!" still lingered in her ears every now and then.

She had yet to even visit her mother in the mental institution since then. A part of her wasn't entirely sure that she could handle hearing her deny that she was hers another time. She never said those words to Noah, not once, but she had always been wary around Vaia. Noah insisted their mother had been going insane slowly through the years, that it wasn't Vaia's fault, but it didn't take the heavyweight off her shoulders when she thought about her mother.

Soon enough, it became easier to forget about her mother and the baggage that she came with when she received a full paid scholarship in journalism, she was able to leave Los Angeles, California, and cross the country over to New York City where she roomed at a university full of people she never imagined meeting. People like her, people that didn't know about her past or her mother. They just knew that she was one of them, an NYC student with the big dream of writing a captivating headliner. She was finally normal. At least that's what she thought.

* * *

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Vaia's eyes flew open to the ringing in her ears and she read the large neon numbers written across her clock. 8:00 AM. Her breath caught in her throat and she threw the blankets off of her body as she scrambled to her feet.

"I'm late, I'm so late," she muttered, frantically throwing her clothes all around her dorm room, hoping some outfit would magically appear before her. Giving up, she ran to the bathroom, getting a toothbrush in her mouth as she started the shower. By the time she was finally dressed and out the door, she knew the class had already begun. Her heart pounded against her chest when she neared the door. It was closed and as she neared closer she could see that the professor was walking around, waving his hands in gestures as he gave a lecture. She grimaced and stopped outside the door, fixing her fly-aways before swallowing her pride.

Reaching out, she slowly pushed open the door, wishing she could become invisible until she got to her seat, but she couldn't. As soon as she stepped inside the classroom, she could feel every set of eyes land directly on her, scrutinizing her every move. Her cheeks throbbed with embarrassment and she slowly looked over towards the one familiar face in the room. A girl that gave her a tour on her first day, she had become a friend of Vaia's in the short time she'd attended the university, but a friend or not, she couldn't save her from the wrath of Mr. Birkholz who was glaring her down.

"Miss Jacobsen," he began, obviously unimpressed. "So kind of you to join us, I hope my lecture wasn't interrupting you entering the room."

Vaia understood she was in the wrong, but it was hard not to get angry when he spoke down to her the way that he always did. People were allowed to make mistakes, right?

"I apologize for being late," with a pause, she took a tentative step forward. "It won't happen again," she promised.

"Well, what are you waiting for then? Take your seat." he raised his voice, causing Vaia's anger to settle in, she clenched her jaw, biting her tongue from saying anything else when suddenly she felt an overwhelming warmth wash over her body.

Vaia's gaze snapped over towards the window where she could see out into the parking lot, in the front row sat a red hatchback that belonged to Mr. Birkholz - at least that's where it sat until a thick bolt of lightning shot out of the sky, crackling down onto the vehicle. A short moment later a terrifying boom followed, shaking the building, and the car was no longer red but black with char and in flames.

The class erupted in gasps and chatter as they crowded the window, trying to wrap their heads around the fact that lightning just came out of a perfectly clear sky without warning. Vaia was shocked too. The warm feeling was gone and she stood by the door, wide-eyed as Mr. Brikholz quickly ran for the door to call for help and get his flame-covered car under control. Apart of her wanted to laugh, but another part of her was in utter shock.

She glanced around for a moment before heading over towards her friend, Payton who was gathered with the others, looking out the window.

"How crazy was that?!" she laughed and Vaia stared at the car, flames dancing in her eyes.

"Definitely not normal," she whispered, mostly to herself.