As much as I wanted to please William and take the investigation slowly, being part of a team meant that eventually one of us would have to do something they did not want to for the sake of the greater good. I bravely continued the investigation into the dinner ladies, which went nowhere because the boys couldn’t find the lady Hassan had seen with Wade Allen Tillerson.
They had done their job diligently. The woman had definitely disappeared. The school grounds staff they had interviewed swore to them that they didn’t know anything about the missing groundkeeper or where Arnold could possibly be, either.
I was on my way back to the main hall when I started to feel dizzy. I had just sat down on the stairs to catch my breath when I started burning up. It felt like a volcano was erupting inside me. I dragged myself into the closest loo and passed out.
I woke up not knowing how long I had been lying on the floor. I started walking, not realising where I was going, when I ended up in the recreational room. I noticed that Tristan, Scarlett and Hogan were there, but unfortunately, they were not alone. Eugenie Pollard was sitting with them, clutching William’s arm.
At that moment, jealousy just took over me, and I wished I could send an energy ball to obliterate that girl. I couldn’t believe that someone like William, who was smart, brilliant even, and had such an incredible heart, would want to be with a harpy like Pollard.
I never did understand why she was so popular. Yes, she was a cute girl, but she was so obsessed with make-up and overused it so much that it was very difficult to see what she really looked like underneath. She spent three hours doing her make-up every morning. Even a geisha did not spend that much time on her make-up, and yet Pollard did.
Everything on her was fake, from her fake eyelashes, her fake green eyes, her fake hair colour to the fake designer items she was wearing. Since we’d got to J.C., she had tried to get close to Pam and me, especially after we had become so popular. It clearly mattered a lot to Pollard and her gang, because although she obviously disliked us, she kept inviting us to every single one of their gatherings and outings, invitations that we had always declined quite rudely, I must say, and now there she was, sitting among my closest friends.
I guessed having her sitting with my gang was a punishment from Odin. Since sharing a room with Scarlett, I had attended a few Sunday services at J.C.’s church, organised by the Christian club. I was interested in finding the differences between our religions, but all I found was a bunch of similarities with different names. It must have angered Odin.
The Christian club was founded by two sixth-formers, Scott Haggerty and his girlfriend, Emily Green. They were part of Scarlett’s church, called Freedom Church, and every Sunday, they watched live the Sunday service delivered from Hereford, where, like Amelia said, the mothership was based.
I finally worked up the strength to go and join the group. Then, putting on my best fake smile, I managed to be civil to Pollard but not friendly. In Yan schools, students were called by their surnames, not their first names, unless they were really close, so it was easy to know who true friends were and who were not.
As soon as I sat down, there was Pollard, and she said, “Hi, Diana.”
Those words just infuriated me. How dare she call me Diana? I was not a friend to her. I was barely an acquaintance, so I said, “It’s Korsning to you. We are not friends.”
I noticed William’s eyes on me, and I could see his body tensing up. I was also watching Scarlett, and she was really sweet to Pollard, and I couldn’t understand why. Pollard had never said a word to her except to mock her religious beliefs and had so far made a point to ignore her, but then again, Scarlett was a sweetheart and religious, so quite forgiving.
William got up, took my hand and pushed me into a corner. I could see that he was upset with me. He said, “Don’t do this. She is my friend. I know that you don’t like her, but I need you to give her a chance.”
“Why should I? You know that I hate her. Everybody in our group hates her, but you still thought it was smart to bring her to our group?” I said. “She is one of the school’s worst bullies. She is awful to anyone that she judges not good enough, and you expect me to turn my back on my friends, who have suffered her insults and horrendous behaviours, to make peace with her. How can you ask that of me?” I added.
That was a little dramatic, but I was banking on him being too much of a gentleman to notice. The reality was that I had finally realised that I was simply jealous of Pollard’s relationship with William. Her being a bully was just a gift from the gods, because it allowed me to look and feel justified when I was mean to her.
He could see I was upset. I could see that he was upset. It was just too much for me and I ran crying. At that point, I just wanted to die. I hated living in the Masani world. Their world could turn the best of us into petty and useless beings. I needed to stay away from William and the feelings he was waking inside me.
When I had calmed down, I went back to join the group, and I noticed that William was holding my tablet and reading my notes with Pollard. To my surprise, my blood started boiling and my eyes started sending lightning bolts towards them. For some reason, I wanted to shout and almost scream.
“Who gave you permission to touch my things?”
I grabbed my tablet and took it from him. I felt so ashamed of myself, and what made matters worse was that I saw Pollard’s eyes, and she looked really scared. She had never seen me look that angry before.
I usually had a blasé look or a bored look on my face when I was unhappy about something, but William was turning me into something I hated, and despite Pollard’s multiple faults, she did not deserve me being mean to her because we liked the same boy. She really did not.
Somehow it felt like William knew what was going on in my head, because he gave me a cheeky smirk, then smiled and said in a patronising voice, “Oh, come on, she is one of us now. She might as well be clued in.”
I felt bad for him; it wasn’t his fault he was so hot.
Winter break was finally here, and as soon as we got to London, we were shipped to Yanara. I was glad to go home. I was even happier when I heard that Pam and Alex had been seen on the lift to my home town because they lived in Yanar City, so I hadn’t expected them to be on their way to Yanara.
Yanara was the capital city of the north. It was also its biggest city. Yanara was an ice city; all the houses and buildings were built using ice blocks. The only touches of colour were the inhabitants’ clothes and the lights all around the city.
Yanara was as prepared for Yule as usual. The Yule celebration was the most important of all the Norse holidays and was twelve nights long. On the night of the twentieth of December, the goddess Freya rode over the earth to bring light and love back into the world.
Yule to the Yans symbolised the start and end of all things. During this festival, Odin rode across the sky on Sleipnir, his eight-legged horse, and left gifts for the children, who in turn left him and his horse edible treats to say thank you.
It was a time for feasting, giving gifts and dancing, and we were all getting excited to dig into the festivities when we were told that it wouldn’t happen this time. Instead of diving into the preparation of Yanara’s biggest holiday, we were taken straight to a military training camp. The camp was hideous; the barracks were made of sheet metal, and there wasn’t a hint of Yule decoration.
For a month now, most Yans at school had complained about not feeling well, myself included, and our temperature was higher, but when we had informed our FIST trainer, he had told us not worry. He assured us that it was a normal phenomenon and that we would find out more during the Yule holidays.
Now we were all packed in one of the barracks, waiting for a great announcement. It did not take long. Adam Korsning Wu, my cousin, came in and burst into flames in front of us.
We all screamed in joy and excitement. The fire power had revealed itself, and we were all here to be trained. War was upon us, and victory would be glorious.
The screams of joy did not last long. Just after Adam’s spectacular show, we saw someone come in. We knew him for being one of the most famous Masanis living in Yan territory: General Grigoriy Vittorio Vasiliev, commander of our army.
Being a Masani in a Yan world was very difficult because Masanis in general were weaker, less intelligent, less educated and less advanced than Yans. Unfortunately for us, that wasn’t the case for General Vasiliev.
The first thing he announced was that anyone old enough to be enrolled in the army would not take part in the Yule festivities, and secondly, we would not be allowed to see our families until we went back to school.
Thanks a lot, jackass, I thought. Yule was my favourite holiday, and instead of being on the street, dancing, we were going to train with an insensitive psycho. My brothers being in the army, I had heard a lot of stories about the general’s way of commanding his troops, and none of them were pleasant at all.
The general also separated the members of the Ten from the rest of the group. As much as I understood that being members of the Ten made us more powerful, I didn’t see the need to train separately, but voicing my opinion would not have mattered.
I couldn’t believe that we wouldn’t be able to go home. As a member of the Ten, I lived in the suburbs, and I loved it. Yanara’s suburb was nicknamed the Village in the Clouds. The neighbourhood was built with blocks of ice, using a Viking village as a model, including the local temple. The foundations had been sculpted into the shape of clouds, which gave the impression that the dwellings were floating in the air. The general council wanted to feel like they were living in heaven with the gods, and they had done a magnificent job.
The training camp, however, was outside the city. I loved the snow; winter was my favourite time of the year, but even I was longing for some heat. They made us use our powers to build our own dwelling. The metal-sheet barracks were made for the officers and trained soldiers only, apparently. The rest of us “fresh off the boat”, as they called us, were taken back to the Middle Ages, and we had to learn how to survive.
It was even more difficult for the ones who were from the Yanar islands, because there was no snow there and they walked around town in bikinis all year. Training in Yanara was a big deal for everyone. Most of the armed forces training camps were located in the Yanar islands, and besides the Norse, the Scots, the Irish and the Swedish descendants, the rest of the Yans usually lived in the south because they preferred the hot climate.
I never thought that the day when I learned to throw balls of fire with Tristan, Alex and our friend Christian Altkasei would ever exist. Although we had been separated from the rest of the soldiers, all fire power holders got to live and train with the members of the Ten because their power was as strong as any of ours, Omnis excluded.
The fire power had revealed itself, and just like in the past, as well as all the Omnis, it had awakened in some male and female Yans, and I was ecstatic to see that three of my closest male friends were Infernos.
Alex had been the only receiver of the fire power among his siblings, but after witnessing the twins Francesca and Christian Altkasei working together, he shared his power with Pam, and she in turn shared her terra power with him, which made them duals. Being members of the Ten, and therefore quite powerful, the council had no option but to allow the sharing of powers between kin until the end of the war.
So after the pain of learning how to live in a very unfriendly environment, we started to have fun with the fire power. I was an Omni, so flying was not new to me, but teaching the others how to fly with their power was exhilarating. The first time we burst into flames, we burned our clothes and were naked, but the trainers were ready with special fire-resistant clothes for us. We managed to throw blazes of fire as well before leaving and wrote “J.C.” in big on the snow next to our camp.
Something did bother us a lot: we had Yans as young as twelve and as old as fifty training. That was very unusual. The war council was definitely preparing for war on Earth, and besides Ragnarök, I really couldn’t understand what kind of war could prompt them to have old Yans in training at all.