“Ohh no you don’t,” Kai argued. “I’m not doing that! You know that Elder John told us to only go in in case of an emergency.”

I gave him the Look. “This is an emergency! The Black Knights are attacking!!!” I whisper-yelled, “Go, go, go, hurry they’re coming, go!!”

“Okay, okay!” he said he climbed up the side of the rock wall and jumped down.

I followed. We ran as fast as we could through all of the shrubbery and trees; we had to get the the other side of the forest as fast as we could. We’re the king’s messengers; that means that when something bad happens, we have to get to the king’s castle as fast as possible to tell the king that his kingdom is under attack. Each village has a boy and a girl messenger. They have to be fast, and they have to be orphans, so they have to be from an orphanage. They have to have a good sense of direction, they need to be smart, athletic, sensible, and have to be a good team.

We had been running through the forest for almost ten minutes and I was starting to get cramps so we came to a stop at a small spring. We put down our stuff. We decided to make camp there, it was about two miles from the village where we lived. It’s called the village of Dragon Burrow. It got its name for all of its dragon nests.

I have an all-elemental dragon that was just born a couple months ago. Kai has a fire-water type dragon that is just a year old. It has already been trained by Elder John. The only reason why his is trained and mine is not is because dragons don’t open their eyes until they are exactly one year old and they won’t be able to understand you if they can’t even see you.

We started a fire and put some stones around it. We got out the food, only enough food for tonight, the breakfast, the next night, and the next breakfast. Well, we ate dinner that night and it was dumplings.

“Ew,” we both said at once. They were all soggy and uncooked dumplings with wet meat inside. Yuck.

Well, we had to make a fire with the help of the few remaining dry sticks left from Kai’s dragon. After we ate dinner, we put out the fire also. Using Pine’s help, we told the story about the Fire Prince. It’s a good story, about a boy who found that he had the power to control the flames and was able to use them to…

After that we went to bed in our tents we set up and fell asleep.

•••

We awoke to the sweltering heat. “Wake up!!! Wake up!!!” I shouted while shaking Kai’s tent.

“What’s going on? Why’s it so hot out there?”

“There’s a fire come on get out of there!!!” Suddenly, the back of Kai’s tent burst into flames.

“Get out of there NOW!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I pulled him out.

“Where are Pine and Evie?” Kai shouted over the the burning trees falling to the ground. My heart literally skipped a beat. Pine, one year old, and Evie, five months, were lost in a monstrous fire. Kai’s eyes nearly bulged out of its sockets, that’s how shocked he was. If he bent over, they would probably fall out. Then we heard the most high-pitched scream ever combined with the average puberty scream of a teenaged boy.

My dragon screaming in the fire sounded like: “AHHH!!!” And then plus the high pitched scream: “EEE!!!”

Suddenly there was a hand on Kai’s foot and a hand on my foot then there were four little stubs on the sides of my head. It also felt like there was a balloon sleeping on my head. Anyway, when I felt the hand on my foot, I screamed, then Kai screamed, then the hand screamed. Then we all stopped, including the fire. Which is weird because it’s a fire. Meh…  so the hand that was on my foot got up and so it was then that I realized that it was a human. Boy. Teenager. Looks. Like. King’s. Lost son. Whoa.

Good hair. Black armour? Bad person. Good hair. Questions go bop.

Bop. Bop. BOP!

“Uh, hi!” he said. He seriously looked like the lost prince, right down to the perfect teeth. Kai looked at him and made a face. “My name’s Ivan.” He held out his armored hand and put the other hand on his sword.

We backed away from him. Pine let out little rings of steam around his body. I felt Evie sink onto my head. I picked her up and held her up to my chest. She nestled in toward me.

“Why are you wearing the Black Knight armor?” I asked the boy. “You’re the lost prince!”

“Says who?” he asked, clearly confused.

“Who are your parents then?” asked Kai

“You mean my dad? Oh, he’s the king of the Black Knights,” the boy said, sounding rather casual.

“Then why aren’t you trying to kill us?” I asked. This was confusing enough with just waking up in a fire that suddenly stops right before your eyes. Then you meet the Lost Prince but he says that he’s not him, and that his dad is the king of the Black Knights.

“Well, I don’t really want to because it’s the world law that you are not allowed to kill any children or women, only men. And since you are both children, I can’t kill you,” he said with an uncertain glance every which way.

“Well, we’re going to the kingdom to see your dad. Do you want to come with us?” Kai asked.

“Sure!” said Ivan. We made our way through the forest to Fairy Way, which is a small city infested with man-sized fairies with giant wings. Next we had to go undercover through the City of Barbarians, which was followed by the Nice City of Everyone. Then on our ninth day, we entered the kingdom of King Edmund the II. We entered the kingdom with tons of guards. We entered the castle, and there were tons of other messengers. Some of which I had never seen, but some we had seen passing by our village for parades. One of the messengers had no shoes, but instead had bandages around blistered feet. Fire blisters. All of the other messengers had some sort of  sign that they had been in some sort of fire… even us. All of our clothes had been singed from the fire that had happened more than a week ago.

Suddenly King Edmund came bursting out of the hall doors muttering something about his evil brother. Two other messengers came out following him with troubled looks on their faces. The king stopped short once he opened the door. There, standing at the door, grinning the evilest, wickedest, grin ever. His dark hair was matted by sweat and revenge, his beard half shaved, and a giant scar running straight down his face. “Nice to see you again… brother!”

At that the wicked man jabbed his “brother” in the jaw, sending him flying back and landing his head on the step up to his office. The man (although he was more of a monster) walked straight up to the king and stomped on his stomach. At that horrid sight everyone in the room cringed and winced as we all grabbed a heavy object from behind us.

This is not going to work out the way we planned, I thought. This is NOT going to work out the way we planned. Now of course, you may be wondering about all this planning. Well, we kids just are special. We are all the same person, just in different bodies. We all have the same minds. It’s fun being a kid for many reasons, one of which I will tell and show you about very soon.

Finally, the horrid thing that called itself the king’s brother bent over the king’s half alive body. “Well, I’m going to take over your kingdom. How about that?” it muttered under its breath. That was when our child anger took over. We charged at the wicked thing, we had our chairs, poles, and parts of the crumbling pillars. In mid-charge, the master of evil made the loudest whistle but we kept running. Suddenly, an army of weirdos busted in to the room. That was when things got real. And I don’t mean like real, I mean like real real, like, real. People started hitting each other on the head! It was every man for himself. By that I mean everyone for themselves. I looked for Kai. When I couldn’t find him standing up I got a pit in my stomach and looked down. There he was, lying unconscious with blood spilling out from his leg. I checked for a pulse. His heart was barely beating.

I ran over to find someone Jack!! His name ran through my mind. Finally, I found him whacking some ugly guy with a chair. I smacked the guy in the head with a piece of wood lying on the ground. He fell flat on his face. He, he. “Kai’s out and we have to get the king to safety. C’mon!” I shouted over the roaring of the war.

We ran over to Kai and I dragged him by his armpits. We dropped him off in the king’s office. Then we went to get the king. I took his upper body and Jack took his lower. We dragged him into the office with Kai. “Jack, grab me that pitcher!” I took the pitcher from Jack and poured the cold water onto Kai’s face. He woke up spewing a fountain of water everywhere!

“What happened?” Kai asked. I passed the pitcher back to Jack and told Kai what happened.

“What happened to your leg?” I asked him, eyeing the gash on his left leg.

“You know, they say that if you don’t look at your own cut then it won’t hurt as much. So now that you reminded me that I will now scream in pain.” And with that he let out an extremely loud roar of pain that made the battle outside sound like a cool breeze.

But something else happened besides everyone in the room losing their hearing, the king woke up. But when I said everyone in the room losing their hearing, I meant everyone in the room. “WHAT IS IT, YAPPERS!!??” the king yelled. He sat straight up with his eyes peeled wide open. I do not know who Yappers is, so I guess that was just a side effect for being nearly killed: going mad. He stood up and with one long stride he reached out to Kai and said, “Take my hand, Marida. And we can ride away to freedom!!” Then he pretended to be a singer. Not good. He took one step forward in slow-mo while pulling up a fist, and then made a face like he had just bit his lip but tried to make it look good. It did not look good. Then he pretended to be a rabid cat. “Heaaasss!!” Then he tried being an evil witch stirring a cauldron but he got it all wrong: “Toilet, toilet, boil and trouble.” Then he was a soldier. “RUN! RUN! RUN! SHE’S GONNA BLOW!! TAKE COVER!!!”

After this went on for a little while more, I realized that the fighting seemed to have stopped. I opened the door to see a giant heap of hideous people and a group of kids brushing themselves off from the previous battle. Although the people in the heap were pretty unconscious the thing that called itself the king’s brother was still get kicked in the gut by some of the other kids. Suddenly, a fire flew up around the people lying on the floor, and a deafening screech filled the room. One moment there were a pile of weirdos. The next, they were gone. Strange. Evie came down from her hiding place and landed on my shoulder while Pine landed on Kai’s.

Now of course you may be wondering about Ivan: well, we hadn’t seen him all day. Oh and here’s the weird part: standing where the heap used to be was… Ivan. This was strange. The fire only appeared when when Ivan came! Like when we were in the woods, the fire came and when it stopped Ivan had appeared! Something rung in the back of my head: the Fire Prince!

The tale of the Fire Prince was a story about a boy who was able to make himself disappear into fire and was able to make others do the same. He could also appear in fire. He never learned how to control his powers until he was in a war and killed everyone in it on both sides. That’s what Elder John told us. But he also said that if the Fire Prince would be able to learn to control his power, no one would get hurt and he would banish the bad to the Horrid Lands. If he really was the Fire Prince, then we needed to teach him how to use his powers the right way. Every day he would become more powerful until the day the war was meant to come.

“Ivan? Is that you? Is it really you?” the king whispered. “After all these years, is it really you?”

“Dad?” Ivan said, getting just a bit teary. Okay, fine, very teary.

After that we all left. It was father-son business, not ours, and anyway, it would have been a bit awkward if we had stayed.

We all huddled out the room and into another room, almost as big as the one before. It was the king’s study. All of his notes were packed into hundreds of notebooks and papers. There was a desk at one end and the big oak door that we had come through. We all looked around in awe. There was a ginormous chandelier hanging by a small chain on the ceiling. After another hour or so, we had found many things such as old maps and other stuff like that. The servants came looking for us and ushered us out the big oak door and up to our rooms. We fell fast asleep, finally being able to feel comfort at last.

The next morning we awoke to the smell of scones and rolls. We went downstairs after getting changed into our new clothes, only to find the king and Ivan laughing and telling each other jokes and Ivan showing off his fire powers. We sat down and had the best meal of our lives: the food was delicious and perfectly cooked over Ivan’s fire that he summoned into the stove. It was a cold morning and no one really wanted be awake. Kai’s leg had been bandaged up but you could still see where it was. The blood had leaked through the cloth.

One of other messengers named Murie had walked over to the big glass window and peered through to reveal about forty giant troops of men lined up about a mile from the castle. It was a terrifying sight to see. “Uh, Your Majesty, th-there seems to  be someone outside,” Murie stuttered. She pointed out to the crowd while the king and Ivan looked out. Ivan looked fine, as he never knew the Black Knights to be evil, while the King looked about as worried as a turkey during hunting season.

“What?! I thought we got rid of him yesterday! When you made him switch places with you! How is he back so soon?” The king groaned. “What does he want now? George! Would you do me the favor of getting me my horse? Oh, and Flynn, go tell the men to get their gear on, and tell the people to go to William’s Church on the countryside. Go! Go! Go! Hurry!!!” he shouted without looking away from the window as the men marched toward the castle.

This wasn’t going to end well. They had obviously way more men than we did. This, we could tell, was not going to be an easy battle against the evilest (by far) person on Earth.

Suddenly, as the king rode out on his horse, five monstrous dragons galloped forward, about the height of the gallows on the other side of the field that were now being trampled by the dragons.

I grabbed Kai and led him outside and onto the steps out front, As soon as the dragons came close enough, Kai muttered, “The Titans.” He stared out onto the field as the king’s horse galloped towards them. Titans. Of course they would be the first choice of the evilest man on Earth. Of course. Why hadn’t we known that he would do this. Kai went back and came back with his sword in his hand. I turned towards Kai only to see him sprinting down the field, chasing after the King, chasing after death itself.

Suddenly, one of the Titans fired a massive fireball the size of a cannonball, and going as fast as one too. Kai took out the sword from the sheath he had been carrying it in and used it to block the fireball. He had already run about a mile from the castle when he jumped up the side of one of the Titans and dragged himself up the beast, it was about forty feet high and wide. It wasn’t long before he reached the top, barely even a minute. The Titan started to buck and kick and finally stood on its two hind legs, forcing Kai to hang on its head armour. The beast stood like that for a long time. Soon Kai began to slip, and he let go.

An amazing thing happened: the Titan caught Kai with one giant palm. The Titan brought Kai up to his face and breathed out, knocking Kai on to his back. The dragon placed Kai on the back of his neck and kept on walking forward. No one dared to move, not even the other Titans. Kai’s Titan walked the rest of the way, and pretty slowly too, until he reached the king. The Titan bent down slowly and plucked Kai from the back of his neck and gently placed him on the ground. The massive beast turned around just as Flynn’s men came onto the battlefield.

Kai had always had a way with dragons. He was always so good with the dragon babies back at home. Elder John used to call him the dragon master, and everyone in the village of Dragon Burrow knew that if anyone would be able to tame a Titan, it would be Kai. So to be honest, it wasn’t much of a surprise to me that he had tamed the Titan.

What did amaze me was how he could have done that with a badly bruised and scraped leg that had a cut about an inch deep. Kai was able to talk to the beast, and it seemed that the Titan could understand him. He directed the beast toward the opposing side, and the beast blew a massive hole in the ground. It sent the front half of the troops flying backward toward the end of the field. That was when the war started, and the remaining soldiers charged forward.

To be honest, it was a pretty hilarious sight because all you saw was a group of five enormous dragons chasing a little person on a gray horse riding as fast as it could with an even smaller boy running next to it while a sixth dragon was trying to bomb about a million people behind the dragons. The dragons stopped when ordered, and the men advanced charging at the opposing side. They fought for fifteen hours, timed until half the men on each side were dead and the other half wounded.

The only ones that remained were the two brothers. They walked toward each other. Once they were close enough, they each picked up a bow from their sides and took their stances. They pulled the arrows back as far as they could, aimed, and the Dark King fired first, shooting a black-silver arrow into King Edward’s chest. It sent him staggering backwards until he finally fell to his knees and fell flat on his chest. A puff of smoke rose from where the arrow had hit him. It was black magic.

From where he stood, Ivan raced about 30 yards before kneeling next to the dead king. The Dark King turned away and walked back to his side. He was halfway there when Ivan stood up and yelled at him, “YOU MONSTER!!!” He ran after him and tackled him to the ground. We were all too stunned to move. We stood there on the steps of the king’s castle. What used to be King Edmund II’s. It wasn’t a good feeling to know that your king gave his life to save the entire kingdom.

No one wanted to do anything. We all stared at our feet, not wanting any part in this madness. Our king was dead, there was nothing good we could do or say. All we could think about was how we failed. We were sent by our village to come to warn the king that the Black Knights were coming so that he could be ready to protect his kingdom and all that surrounded it. Now he was dead, a quarter of the other people with him. It shouldn’t have ended in a battle of the brothers. After all, they were brothers. They suffered through their mother’s death when they were born and had to live alone with their father who later died in a battle when they were five. It was Edmund’s shoulder that his brother cried on. It wasn’t just a sin that the king’s brother, Rith, had made, it was a betrayal, a deception. Broke a brotherly bond between the two.

Suddenly, a beam of light shot up from the middle of King Edmund’s chest. The very top of it turned into an eagle. For ten seconds, it stood there beaming a blue-ish light into the blood-soaked sky. Then, as soon as it came, it vanished, taking his body with it. In its place laid a thin crown made of a worn silver, no longer shiny of the new creation, but dull and scratched from life’s hard work and pain. From a lost mother, a lost mather. And a lost brother. Rith shook the crying Ivan off of him and gently picked up the small crown.

As soon as he touched it, it seemed as if he had been relieved of a pain or a curse. The expression on his face turned from a hard, stern, frightening look, to a gentle, warm, soft look as he held the crown. Then a sudden look of realization and worry come to his face as he whispered, “The old witch at the end of the woods.” He dropped the crown and jumped back. The whole evil king thing was just some weird witch’s fault. It was only a curse. Only a curse. Just a simple spell on a poor man’s mind to make him do evil things for an evil one’s liking. It wasn’t right. But it was over now that the curse was gone. The king was gone too. Rith was left in a haze and we all went to the center of the field where Rith stood staring at the crown.

His eyes weren’t dull like they seemed before. In fact, now they were shining. They were gray with small flecks of gold, like the king’s except his were green. Now Rith only looked like a scared young man, no longer the vengeful demon that had killed his own brother. We walked over to him and we crowded around in a circle around him. We stood there for a long time.

Soon, Rith broke the silence. “Did I kill him?”

I nodded. He turned and cried. He later disappeared with Ivan. Ivan wanted to be with his newfound and good uncle. After all, he had no one else to live with.

We decided to leave. It took almost two weeks to get back and what we saw was amazing, though burnt. The people had begun to rebuild, though it seemed impossible. Evie and Pine had beat us home and left when the war started. It was amazing to get back to help the other people. When they heard the news about the king, we celebrated all through the night. Little pockets of bright green grass came out of ash. Right by the entrance to the village, there was a rose.

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