Charles king lonely hope part 1
Chapter 14

“Ssshhhhh he is waking up”. Kevin whispered.

“Charles? Can you hear me?” Grace said softly. Oh my god, my head is screaming, I think I’m on a bed, yep definitely on a bed, I’m laying down, I need to open my eyes whatever these swirls I see in the darkness are not helping me. Slowly I opened them. Grace and Kevin came into focus leaning over me.

“Oh, good you are awake” Kevin said looking relieved “You look bad”.

“thanks,” I said, in a very grotty tone. I tried to sit up, and Grace grabbed my arm quickly. “I’m fine, Grace thank you... what happened?” Kevin and Grace looked at each talking with their eyes, urging the other to talk.

“Your jaw was broken sweetie,” said a soft heavenly voice, I moved slowly to my left. There was a pale young woman in her twenties in a flowy white dress and no shoes on, flowers in her silver long hair and a flower necklace, and shockingly blue eyes, “hello, I am Miss Betty and I am the doctor here at Kingsborn, nice to meet you... drink this it will help with your headache” miss betty handed me a silver case with purple goo that smells like feet.

“Thank you,” I said and took the bottle and purposely wafted it under Kevin’s face and watched his mouth wow, “3,2,1.” I drank it in one go, the smell was misleading, and it tasted like strawberries. And the pounding was gone, I could think now. “How did I end up here?” I asked.

“Some guild member appeared after you hit the floor alone with two 5th years” Kevin said, “they started examining you and then the guild member made you float, and they ran off along with you”.

“How was I hurt? I have been hitting people in the face a lot during the royale! Are they here too?” I looked around the room properly for the first time. I am the only one in a bed here, rows of beds with curtains around them, stairs in the corner that lead upstairs, and an office in the corner, I think that is Miss Betty’s office. And windows behind me that look over the backfield, the library across from it and the stairs that the cafeteria is under.

“Nobody was hurt,” Grace said calmingly “apart from you”.

“My mum and dad and yours are furious”. Kevin said, “And Lincoln yikes, I felt the heat come from him”.

“he’s not joking! Lincoln had heat coming from him, according to your dad when we asked it was a fire mage thing, and then he mad and started knocking everybody out! He won the entire thing! Kevin came second”.

“I wasn’t going to fight him for first, I don’t have a death wish”.

“of course, he did” I giggled “Where is he? And Yasmin?”

“With our parents, trying to replace out what happened” The door burst open and Dad came in looking insane and then relieved when he saw me, he looked at Miss Betty and she said.

“he’s okay and is free to leave”.

“Thank you” Dad said, “you three come on” I went to step out of the bed and then realised I was still in the magic suit while Grace and Kevin were in school uniforms.

“Uniform is in the bag,” Kevin said when handing me my school bag, we left in silence and made it our way through the school, past some families, eagerly walking closer to us and trying to listen in. Out the front of the school were, Mum and Lincoln and the rest of the Church, Marvin, Tracy and Yasmin. I stepped down the stairs and Mum hugged me,

“we’ll talk at the guild” she said “We will bring the suit back tomorrow, let’s go” Lincoln still looked angry, and Tracy ran her hands through my hair trying to fix whatever was going on with it. We walked through the big walls towards the portal and into the central station and made our way through the crowds, that slowly began to recognize my parents and then myself, we went through central and fast and out into the station closest to us, we didn’t go home now we walked the other way past a lovely smelling restaurant and coffee shop.

We made it to the guild, and no one had a word just yet, the large doors flung open, and we stepped into a vibrant scene, colourful and loud, until they saw us, and everything came to a halt. Madison ran up and hugged me, tightly, to my surprise, she might be full of jokes, occasionally moody and sometimes acts like she doesn’t like us, but we know she cares.

“Come take a seat” the guild master said. With a Solemn look, he ushered us down, into the square with all the tables and waved away some guild members, they moved happily, and I sat down, with only the kids. Kevin, Yasmin, Lincoln, Madison, and Grace, wait Grace is here and so is her mum I didn’t notice before, I never looked behind me and didn’t know they were here too, Grace’s mum looks uncomfortable.

“Right, what happened?” the guild master demanded, and the guild gathered around my table, the front doors slammed shut and my mum answered.

“Charles’s Suit didn’t work,” She said, “resulting in Charles taking a spell from close range and breaking his jaw, he was held in position by another boy holding his feet while a different one hit him.

“What!?”

“Shameful!”

“Holding him still”.

“Cowards” It’s nice to hear the guild be shocked and call Wyatt and his friends shameful.

“Quiet down” Ernest the guild master said. “The suit was faulty. What happened leading up to the incident? From the beginning” I started with Royale starting, then meeting Charlotte, then seeing Grace, she suddenly went as red as her hair, then I talked about Lincoln coming in with and helping and finally about what Wyatt and his brother said.

“They said what!”

“Scum!?”

“I’ve seen their family”.

“Hypocrites!”

Just remembering it makes my blood boil all over again. I looked over at my mum she wasn’t angry in any sense of the word, not a spec of rage, nor an inkling of wrath. She was smiling with a proud grin, a shy sparkle in her eye too.

“Good boys!” Ernest said “Was you given the suit? Or was it random?”

“Random” Kevin said, “we walked in the changing rooms, and they were on the benches, and we just picked random ones”.

“Interesting, Charles come please” I stood up and walked to Ernest and the guild master smiled and waved two people over, an older man, with grey eyebrows and no chin, and an old woman with short sliver hair, headband, and grey eyes. “Charles this is Alfred Pritchard and his wife Dolores Pritchard, they want to take a look at your suit for a moment”. I didn’t say anything, I felt awkward as it was, I’m currently star-fishing in the middle of the guild while two old people I met five minutes ago look me over and move my body however they want to.

“it’s not faulty” Mr. Pritchard “Well it is now of course, but it was broken from the inside” It’s fun to see the confused look on the faces of the guild members.

“Do you know?” Mrs. Pritchard said loudly, her chin pointing at the ceiling “How a mage’s magic can be released from their body when they are emotional?” the guild was no longer confused, they started smiling and mouth on, “Dark Magic is rare and little know about it and if any other mage attempts Dark magic, well history has proven it has never ended well for them, but Charles here understandably got angry, and his magic slipped out and it broke the spell on the suit”.

“Some strong magic that”

“Impressive”

“That’s a king for you”.

“Wish I knew that sooner” Tracy said, scratching her cheek looking extremely Guilty! “What!” she added at the people who dared look at her “I thought someone had given him a bad suit so I may have... you know”.

“She threatened to hunt down the person” Marvin said, “and I quote hit them so hard their grandchild will feel it”.

“Needed to be done!” Tracy said popping the collar on her leather jacket. “On a different note, we have the winner and runners up of the rookie royale, in second place my son Kevin church!” everyone clapped, and I joined in too and clapped loudly too, “and the winner! with the record number of eliminations might I add! Lincoln King,” once again everyone clapped, I looked at my brother and caught his attention and I mouthed.

“record” with a well-done face. He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. Yasmin playfully nudged him with her shoulder.

Bang! Bang! All heads turned to the door and then like the parents most people in this room where people started to count heads and see who wasn’t there. Bang! Bang!,

“I’ll get it,” Ernest said and walked over and pulled open the doors, Noah walked in the third year, and looked happy eying the room up,

“Hey, I’m Noah I’m from kingsborn high school and on behalf of team Scorpio” he pointed at a staff emblem on his black blazer, “I’m looking for Lincoln King” he pulled out a blazer from behind his back “I’m guessing you all know what this means” that got a chuckle and Noah parted the crowd like the red sea leading the way through to Lincoln.

“Hey Charles!” Noah greeted me when he came close, “heard you were doing well until the whole jaw thing, how’re you feeling?“.

“I’m good” I didn’t want to talk any more than that.

“Grace, Kevin how do you do?” they nodded to Noah and then he turned to Lincoln. “Tim told me you would be here, it was a very easy vote and we thought we would get here first and offer you a part in Scorpio” Lincoln stood up and took the Black Blazer, “I will say before you try it on, wait until the others get here, I don’t think I will be the only one I turning up, in the morning come to school with the blazer on, and the ones you reject give to your form teacher tomorrow... did I do that well?” Noah looked around waiting for anyone to answer.

“Done well mate” Dad said patting Noah on the shoulder, “explained very well”.

“Thanks” Noah said okay, “I’m going to get going, have a good night!” Noah left and closed the door behind him.

I woke up in the morning, with the worst dry mouth I have ever had, but the motivation to get up was not in my body at all, instead, I drifted to the faces of my parents being super proud and the guild being insanely impressed by Lincoln getting 6 visits all carrying a school blazer, he even got one from the all-girls teams they have only ever had 4 males in their history, mum was in that team, so was Aunty Alex and Tracy. while Dad and Marvin were in team Scorpio, he will likely join team Scorpio.

Yasmin received a blue blazer and then spent an hour with my mum on one side and on the other her mum and Madison hanging onto every word spoken about how Yasmin would love being on team Aquarius, Lincoln I felt sorry for not a second went by without somebody telling him to join their old team.

“wake up” Dad’s voice screeched through my head, “got school soon, get dressed and come downstairs for some breakfast” I didn’t even realise I had fallen back asleep, I kicked the covers off myself, Dad had left the door ajar and light streamed through my dark room. I stumbled into the kitchen to my mum dancing to music, knives buttering toast and dad drinking his coffee.

“Morning,” I said and yawned and a piece of buttered toast jammed itself into my mouth. “thanks”

“nice shot” Dad said to Mum, I grabbed myself a glass of orange juice after eating my toast and then Lincoln came into the kitchen wearing a black blazer.

“YES!” Dad said, “Good choice son!” Mum hurried around and began fixing his blazer and straightening up his tie.

“looks good,” I told my brother.

“Thanks,” he said

“MUM! DAD!” Madison shouted, instantly they both ran out of the kitchen, Lincoln and I followed on instinct, and we went into the living to Madison in her school uniform, a typical primary school one for girls,′ a skirt and a jumper, hers is blue. she was pointing at the tv.

it was my face on it, Dad flicked his hand and the volume soared. the news anchor appeared adjacent to my face.

“Shocking news coming out of Eastern Europe today, Charles King is being hailed as the saviour of the rebels and the face of the entire rebellion that is sweeping across all of Europe, it is believed that because he is the only mage in centuries to have been born with an affinity to dark magic, he is the saviour, the chosen one, the one to bring about change to the world, obviously we can not confirm this to be true but tv crew has been on the ground getting all the information”. suddenly it changed to A woman holding a baby standing in front of a crumbling building.

“he is here to save us, can’t you see” she said in a thick Eastern European accent, “dark mages have always helped the rebels and he has appeared now when we needed him most”

“what the....”