Ch 69: Beep… Beep
Beep… Beep… Beep…
"Aahhh, stop this sound," Melissa groaned as she shifted on her bed, sliding her hand out toward her bedside table. She searched for the alarm clock, and ended up hurling it down to the floor.
Clank Clunk, the alarm clock hit the ground with sharp sounds but it still kept on going with its tantrum.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
Melissa turned her head toward the window. She barely managed to open her eyelids after all her eyelids were so heavy that they threatened to fall down back. She tried to peer at the window and found out that the curtains were drawn and the curtains looked dark, extremely dark and the room was even more dimly dark.
"Who set this alarm clock to buzz so late at night?" Melissa pushed her hand against the pillows and sat up, her back arching like a cat, and with a long yawn, she bent her body out to the floor to stop the alarm clock from buzzing nonstop.
She quickly found it laying on the ground and stopped it by pressing its button. She placed it back on the bedside table, and fell again onto the bed with her legs and arms wide out, going for another round of sleep, no, it was more like completing her disturbed sleep.
Who in the world set the alarm this late at night? Was it malfunc-, no, no, no, oh god! Melissa screamed in her mind, and immediately jolted up from her bed and jumped to the side of the floor, only to fall head first as her legs got all tangled up in the blanket.
She groaned in pain and shifted against the floor and started punching her legs out, trying to kick away that tangled blanket from her legs, she hurriedly ran her hand to the lamp placed at the side of the bed, and after a fumbling moment she found it and quickly lit the room. She scrambled to her feet, freeing her legs from the blanket, and looked at the clock. The time was 3:35 in the morning.
She heaved a long sigh, thanking God for waking her on time, because in twenty five minutes, no, in twenty minutes she had to reach the training grounds, and for that she had placed an alarm at 3:15 early in the morning because she needed time to freshen up and not go to the training ground groggily.
But she had kept on ignoring the alarm for twenty whole minutes, no, she had not heard it at all and had only started hearing it a few minutes back, because she had been too deep in sleep to even register the beeping of the alarm.
Melissa pushed her thoughts away, yawned out loud, picked the blanket up from the ground and put it back on the bed, and as her eyes stopped at the pure white bedsheet, she felt for a second she just wanted to return to the bed, and she did. She jumped onto the bed.
Just five more minutes. She would only sleep for five more minutes and after that she would quickly freshen up and go to the training grounds.
And then her eyelids dropped shut and she drifted back into a blissful sleep.
***
Melissa opened her eyes to find herself standing before Lucien in a dark room. Despite the darkness, Melissa could see him clearly. He wore a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the top buttons undone, revealing his neck and upper chest. He wore black trousers and black leather shoes, his hair was slicked backward, and his face, Oh God, it was filled with scorn and absolute contempt. He muttered something inaudible and from his dimensional ring he took out a dark black sword that had thorns jutting out all along its blade. Melissa found herself screaming at him, what are you doing, why a sword all of a sudden?
It did not take long for her to receive an answer as Lucien lifted his sword up and brought it down in a diagonal slash aimed straight at her, and within the blink of a second the slash appeared before her face, pushing away the very space around it, cutting through the fabric of the dark space she was standing in, and the slashed landed on her face.
"AAArrrghhh!" Melissa screamed out loud, punching her hands and legs out, and when she found her hands and legs striking against soft fabric, she turned around to find herself lying in her bed with the blanket draped over her. She threw the blanket off and sat up. She found her whole body was drenched in sweat and her eyes were darting around wildly, unable to tell whether her bedroom was a dream or that black space where she had faced Lucien.
Melissa immediately ran to her bathroom, where she stared at herself in the mirror and let out a long sigh of relief, pressing her hands flat against her chest and drawing in long, deep breaths before finally pinching her cheeks.
That was one hell of a dream! Melissa steadied her breathing trying to calm her nerves.
***
An open, wide training ground lay before Melissa, the same one where she had dueled with Lucien and fainted because he had knocked her out cold. She felt embarrassment creeping in just thinking about it, so she shoved the thought away to the backburner of her mind.
Currently she was running and making sure she did not stop even for a second. She wore a white top and black leggings with a black jacket that she had received along with her uniform from Lucien, handed to her by his attendant. There were other outfits she had been given, but out of all of them she had found only these clothes to be suitable for training.
Her jacket was zipped up, trying to keep her body warm against the cold surrounding air, and as she ran, her nose, thraot, and lungs were filling with the cold, making her shiver a little as the chill tightened her airways with every breath she pulled in.
Earlier, she had quickly freshened up and changed into these clothes from her night pajamas as she had finally calmed herself down from that nightmare where Lucien had swung his sword at her face.
She felt a shudder run down her spine just remembering the feeling of that slash grazing her skin. She dreaded imagining what pain she would have felt had she not woken up from that nightmare when she did. She was even beginning to think that Lucien had done something to her to conjure that dream, so that she would wake up early and not miss the training.
But Melissa shook the thought away because Lucien was not someone to resort to casting curses like that. He would rather appear in person and cut her down himself. He was not someone to threaten her in dreams, he was someone who would do it in real life.
Melissa shook her head to stop the spiral of thoughts. She pumped herself with a long breath and increased her pace and finally after a minute or so found herself arriving at the training ground.
Melissa turned her head around to look for Lucien and quickly found him, not just him but Eleena as well, who was running alone by herself along the training ground's track. Lucien was standing in the centre, wearing black trousers and a long sleeved black shirt, unlike the formal wear he dressed in every single day.
Melissa narrowed her eyes and noticed that he was tapping his foot against the ground. And, then suddenly Melissa's eyes met his silver gaze, his silver pupils seeming to glint with cold irritation, and she knew exactly what that meant. Lucien was furious because she had not arrived five minutes early but rather had entirely shown up late by minutes. She did not know how many minutes late as she had not brought a clock with her, but she would find out soon enough as she drew closer to him.
Melissa quickened her pace and came to a stop before Lucien. She looked at him and waited for him to speak. And, like she had expected, he spoke with a harsh voice.
"You are ten minutes late," Lucien said, folding his arms across his chest.
***
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