"This is no laughing matter!"
Jaldi spat.
Slapping a Laening across his amphibious face and wiping the slime from his palm after stepping atop its tail. Jaldi was taking a head count of his invading force, barely more than two dozen warriors was the force allowed to him by the cruel Xanul. Xanul hoped at times his assassin would fail in his missions. Thus strengthen him and hoped the humans would find and experiment on the assassin. Jaldi saw the cruel and calculating logic to it all. Failure is weakness, only the strong are to lead and survive, those who fail and are weak shall be cast aside or used for the purposes of the strong.
That was how Xanul thought, that was his baser philosophy when it came to ruling his fiefdom, true-certain Laening lords were more benevolent than others but the frequency was sparse. Indeed Jaldi couldn't see more than a handful of those lords being that kind and a majority of them being as cruel if not crueler than his own master. Jaldi understood this deep within his crimson fueled heart. The Laenings Jaldi and his underling officer requested via pigeon letter were supposed to be an elite force from Xanul's own bodyguard unit but in a cruel and not so unusual twist from the Laening lord he would not spare his most skilled and fully trained battalion for a simple "scouting" mission. Instead the master opted for fresh recruits and practically children soldiers in terms of both skill and Laening age. Laenings lived for hundreds of years and any being of age below one hundred was not considered a fully fledged adult yet.
Xanul in his mocking of Jaldi and perhaps of the failing commander he had sent with him, decided if Jaldi was so persistent in performing this scouting mission then it shouldn't matter what type of troops he should have. Many weeks had passed since Jaldi received these new recruits and in that time he decided to set up a base camp from which they would operate and train from. Jaldi and the Laening commander were both adept in the Arcane, however with little manpower and no reinforcements to speak of they decided the best course of action was to build a mini scouting fortress at the base of the mountain of Arcadia Oaks High. Their tasks were simple really. Yet only Jaldi himself knew what they were and had to do-no what they needed to do. He wouldn't reveal the objective of the mission until the apex of their mission commenced. Failure was not an option for the assassin, anything less than pure and savage victory would result in brutal punishment from his master. Jaldi had already felt the sting of Xanul's demon dactyls and wouldn't like to feel their vicious maws again for a long while.
The haphazardly made tent Jaldi was in was tight and small. In the center stood a smaller and even more decrepit table with a poorly etched out ink map. Whichever Laening made this abomination deserved execution but alas he needed as many Laenings as physically possible for what he planned next and could not spare any executions made out of contempt or petty spite. The map detailed their current location with a dot marked in the Laening tongue "Zotl," it read. The surrounding areas where both food and the human roads were designated as well as the surrounding forest and the location of the human school they planned to attack. The map's detail, although crude, was very illustrative and accurate so maybe execution wasn't the best option. Either way Jaldi knew he had to call upon the troops soon.
He stepped outside of his patchwork tent to reveal the wooden palisades they had constructed in the time they'd been staying within the forest. Jaldi walked past many of the tents and nodded along to a few of the recruits in acknowledgement of their efforts and headed towards the gate where Eshpak, the Laening commander was guarding the gate. The fortress or even if you could call it that, was small, barely fifty meters in diameter and held within the measly force of about twenty four Laenings or so. Scattered about the inside of the wooden palisades were tents and a few wooden ramshackle shacks holding weaponry, armor, and food supply. Jaldi stalked his way towards Eshpak who was barking commands to some scouts returning from reconnaissance.
"So, how's our food supply?"
Jaldi said in Laenish.
"relatively sshort on sssuply m'lord."
The lizard said in a slow reply.
Eshpak was large for his demeanor. He was a darker shade of green then his fellow soldiers and the colors of his eyes revealed the presence of Arcane flowing through his veins. He had no tail, but was tall and sturdy-his eyes were sharp and reflexive ready to strike at any unknown enemy if they so chose to sneak upon him. However the only caveat to Eshpak's overwhelming brute force and physical prowess was dwarfed by the fact he had a human leg meaning he was xanjur. A xanjur in terms of Laening society was any Laening with a human appendage or mutation. In their society it was deemed disgusting and outright wrong to have any human parts. Arcane flowed freely through the Laening race while it flowed weakly through humans. The stronger you were in the arcane the more revered you are in Laening society.
The weak are there to serve the strong. Those who are weak are servants till death.
That was the vile Laening code of conduct, their prayer if you will, to their wretched God Laen. They would always pray to it before battle. For the Lizard humanoids known as Laenings there was no greater glory than dying in battle for the glory of Laen, their wretched god. Of course Jaldi thought this preposterous, there is no glory in death. Glory is for the living and death is for the dead.
Jaldi flashed a cruel smile and eshpak raised an eyebrow in confusion
"Sssomething wrong m'lord?"
"No, nothing Eshpak. Just. . . it's ironic really."
"What is?"
Jaldi only gave the Laening another cruel smile and simply chuckled for this was not a scouting mission upon a mere human highschool. This was a full blown assault. No prisoners except females and strong willed males. Jaldi roared in laughter and simply sauntered off in extreme joy and pleasure.
_______________
Alex was enjoying a hot cup of coffee. He only enjoyed his coffee hot with a few ice cubes and half the cup being filled with whole milk. So it was more akin to a lukewarm milk smoothie than an actual beverage. He walked briskly from the vending machine when he spotted Mino and Cali holstered up together as thick as thieves.
Cali strutted with the confidence of a model and Mino's relaxed posture revealed an assurance of someone older. Alex winced under the bright clear sky and moved his hand to cover said sky.
"Hey player, where you been?"
Cali asked playfully.
"Oh you know,"
Alex said slyly:
"I've been around."
Mino chuckled and interrupted:
"Alright, alright relax lovebirds."
Both Alex and Cali shot him a deadly look in unison and he immediately backed off from his usual teasing.
It was just another day for this unusual trio. Cali, although she didn't necessarily fit into Alex and Mino's private but small clique, offered a friendly and familiar presence for the duo. Cali recounted it numerous times.
She always felt as though they were her best friends but she wasn't theirs. It was a familiar yet bittersweet feeling that welled up within her when they were together. Still what bliss being together like this in these precious moments of their youth, memories Cali knows she will cherish for the rest of her life and hopefully they will. This was Calisca's last coherent thought before she was blasted back with a thunderous roar that cooked her brain so hard she couldn't see for a few dozen seconds. She had blacked out without realizing it. As she slowly regained her vision she saw that everything around her was heavy with smoke and stank of death and burnt flesh. She could hear screaming and yelps for help surrounding her and the blaze of the flames made her dizzy and breaths did not come easy.
She finally regained her peripheral vision and saw limbs torn and bodies littered about the ground as the smell of burnt charred and crispy flesh hit her nose. She almost threw up and saw ravens plucking out loose eyes and toes from even more destroyed and crippled corpses. Cali as she was walking through as she watched a half burned student take their own switch blade and sliced a wide clean smile across their neck. It was gruesome and she even had to watch fellow classmates be assaulted in more ways then one by snake men? Or human lizards as some of them had human-like features throughout their body save for one monstrosity who looked more like a character straight out of The Addams Family. The hunchback had a gruesome 5 foot statue clad in what seemed to be steel armor colored an alluring lusterless black that could match the dark sky rising from the horizon towards the east. The sun set on both the world and this school. Cali was frightened to death and didn't know what to do.