The Legacy of the Sky, Book 1: Chapter 1

Chapter 1: My Best Friend gets in Trouble for Going to the Bathroom
My name is Matthew Anderson. My actual given name is Link Ordona, but I haven’t gone by that since I was three years old. I barely knew my mother, and I never met my father, as my father had left before I was born and my mother had died when I was just three years old. Up until recently, I was a fairly normal thirteen year old kid; I went to a boarding school in Manhattan, New York, and my grades were surprisingly high despite my ADHD and dyslexia, but I didn’t have many friends. Ever since that fateful day (and even a few times before) where I killed my teacher and learned what happened to my father, I have been stabbed, slashed, crushed, bitten, burned, poisoned, drowned, electrocuted, and… well, I think you get the picture. If you want to know the truth about me and this world, by all means keep reading. You’ve been warned.

My day sucked when I had to vaporize my substitute teacher and her dog. I entered one of my daily Tuesday ten o’clock English classes near the end of the school year with my best friend Gregory Herb.

I have to back up here a second and talk about Greg for a moment. He was an odd kid to say the least. He had some sort of weird disease in his legs that made him walk funny and it got him out of gym class. He never agreed to go swimming or do anything that meant him taking his pants off. I know this sounds weird, but this kid goes to extremes to keep his pants and his shoes on. Greg is also one of the hairiest guys I have ever known. He already had a wispy goatee, very hairy arms, and a bushy mini-afro. I also noticed that he ate almost anything, like eating silverware and pop cans. He and I were the main outcasts of St. Charles ’ Academy, a boarding school about as far north as you can go in Manhattan. Anyways, we got an unexpected surprise that day, when we were all so excited for the summer holidays starting at the end of the week. When the door to the classroom opened, instead of our normal teacher, Ms. Hanglton, a different teacher walked in. This woman was very fat, and she wore a lot of denim clothing, and she carried a fearsome looking Chihuahua in her handbag, which is a pretty impressive feat for a Chihuahua. What I found rather disturbing was her snake like eyes that seemed to dart everywhere, but always managing to rest on me. Greg took one look at the substitute teacher and started to panic.

“We have to get out of here,” he whispered to me.

“Dude, what’s wrong? It’s just a fat substitute,” I told him, my ADHD keeping me from holding back on the rude comments.

“Oh, she’s not our substitute,” he whispered.

“Take out your notebooks. Copy down what’s on the board. NO talking!” the substitute snapped at us.

Greg raised his hand, “Um… I don’t feel so good. Can I go to the washroom?” he asked.

“Fine, but make it quick!” she hissed.

“Can Matthew come with me? I can’t walk very well, so I need him to help,” he told her, and much of the class giggled at this.

She looked at me, “You may… take him with you…” she said slowly. “Meet me outside firsssst,” she hissed again, just like a snake.

“Uh-oh,” Greg muttered as he took his ‘lucky pencil’ in his hand. He stood up with difficulty and trudged out the door with my assistance.

“Quick, before she comes out, untie my shoes,” he told me, looking over his shoulder at the classroom door.

“What are you talking about?” I asked him. Would you go along if your friend asked you to untie his shoes with a pencil held over his shoulder like a baseball bat waiting for your substitute teacher?

“Just do it! We don’t have much time. I swear I will explain the whole truth later, just please untie my shoes!” he pleaded with me. How often to you get a guy over the age of five ask you to untie his shoes for him? Plus, Greg had this pleading animal look that managed to make me do anything for him.

I bent down and undid his shoelaces. “What is goin’ on?” I asked him.

“Not here, I’ll tell you after we get rid of the Chimera,” he looked over his shoulder again just as the substitute teacher opened the door.

“Now children, you have already been very naughty, sssssso I might just have to give you detentionsssss,” she hissed.

“What are you…?” I gave her a puzzled look as she dropped her handbag with her Chihuahua to the ground and ripped away her denim jacket.

“I am Echidna, the mother of all monsters, husband to the all powerful Typhon! Now you must die at the hands of my child!” She screamed, revealing scaly skin underneath her clothes, and a forked tongue darted from her mouth. All of the sudden, I saw something flicker out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see the Chihuahua struggling and changing, growing, body parts bubbling. It grew to be the size of a bear, ending up with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and a venomous snake for a tail.

“What is that thing?!” I cried out to Gregory, put he wasn’t paying much attention to me any more.

“A Chimera, stay away from it!” he warned, and that’s when I saw that he had undergone his own morph. His ‘lucky pencil’ that was normally a rough and chewed on pencil, had now turned into a big rough club, or cudgel. I also noticed that he had kicked his shoes aside, but before I could get a look at his feet, he jumped into action. He waved his club over his head, screaming a scream that sounded like a goat’s bleat. He gave the Chimera a few good whacks over the head, but it didn’t seem to do much, just anger the beast.

“Run!” he called over his shoulder to me, and then I noticed the monster Echidna advancing towards me.

“A very rare and tasty treat for there is a very powerful aura with this one. You will be delicious!” she taunted. I followed Greg’s instructions and ran for my life. I kept going until I turned a corner and couldn’t help stopping in my tracks, for right in front of me, crouching over a water fountain, was Elissa Matheson. I couldn’t stop myself from stopping dead and trying to stop my heart from doing a little flip flop in my chest when ever I saw her, but it always happened. She turned to look at me and smiled. God she’s pretty, I thought. She was tall and lithe from being so athletic, and she had warm brown eyes that almost made me melt whenever we would make a brief moment of eye contact. Her nose and upper cheeks were dotted with very faint freckles, and she had dark brown straight hair that reached to her shoulders, when not in its usual ponytail that left her eyebrow length bangs and two locks of hair to frame her beautiful face. She swept back one of these locks from her face and over her ear and smiled at me, as she was always usually nice to me and disapproved of everybody’s bullying, but then she noticed the look of panic on my face and frowned.

“Hey, what’s up? You looked worried,” she asked with concern.

“I don’t actually know, so I can’t really explain it right now, but I do know something bad is happening, and I want you to come with me. Now,” I pleaded, not sure she would believe me, because according to the school, I was a psycho and she was one of the most popular kids, but she was kind to me and nodded and then followed me as I ran down the corridor, easily keeping up with me. We burst threw the doors and outside together, tumbling to the grass. We sat up, and heard a roar, followed by a ground shaking tremor. We looked each other directly in the eyes, and we had some sort of mutual understanding. We were in serious trouble.