Chapter 5: 8. They Heard Part 2

Ajax groans. The words of his Father are now getting loud enough to cause him to feel a headache coming on. Christa Rowfield turns from the student she’s helping to see Ajax hold his forehead in pain. Shaula is looking at him in worry. He is also sweating buckets; to Christa he appears to be sick with the flu. She can only think that this is quite unlucky for him. Some of the other students turn briefly towards Ajax after hearing him groan. They notice that he is in pain and perspiring. They can see that Ms. Rowfield is aware of his current condition as well, so they turn back to their own test papers. Whatever is going on with Ajax, she will deal with him. Christa walks discreetly towards Ajax’s table. He is one of her brightest students, he wouldn’t make up excuses or try to weasel his way out of a difficult test. She assumes that he would want to be taken to the nurse’s station. Although it’s a shame to stop now while there’s still a little over a half hour left, he can still do a make up exam at a later date. Ajax looks up to see that Ms. Rowfield has approached him. He can see that she isn’t reacting at all to the voice that is currently drowning out everything else in the room; she is only looking towards him with concern for his well-being. He looks quickly at the other students and sees that none of them are reacting either.

Whatever he’s hearing, it isn’t something that anyone else can hear. If it were just a weird noise, he might have assumed it was something like tinnitus. But, he can clearly hear sentences and words being spoken through the voice. The voice itself feels familiar to him as well even though he doesn’t exactly know why. Unknown to Ajax, the reason he finds the voice familiar is that this is the voice he heard in his dream last night, the dream that he has already forgotten about for the most part. As the voice continues to grow louder, Ms. Rowfield starts to speak.

“Ajax, don’t worry about the test, you can leave the classroom for the nurse’s station. I’ll come and check in on you after I’m done here. Do you need Shaula to take you? You can hand in your test, Shaula, I can tell you’re already done with it anyways.”

Christa speaks to Ajax in an understanding manner and looks towards Shaula. However, she notices that Shaula also has a poor expression on her face. Christa can see beads of sweat dripping down her forehead onto the test paper she’s holding. Shaula is clearly in some sort of distress or pain. Shaula slowly hands over the test to Christa while continuing to stare directly at Ajax. Her eyes are trembling.

“Shaula–” As Christa tries to ask Shaula what’s wrong, Ajax interrupts her in a halting manner.

“Ms. Rowfield… uh… do– do you not…” Ajax doesn’t finish his sentence however, he instead quickly closes his eyes as the headache he is feeling starts to get worse. Until now, the voice while loud and blaring in Ajax’s ear had a whisper quality to it. However, the voice isn’t whispering anymore. The fact that it is now even clearer for him to hear only increases his pain. It is loud enough to make Ajax think that his ears should be bleeding and its clarity as a true voice adds an incomprehensible psychic damage. He cannot hear anything around him anymore.

“Ah. Ahhh… AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

Ajax starts screaming at the immense pressure on his mind. All of the students in the class turn away from their test papers to see what’s going on. They see Ajax leaning hard against his table while desperately clutching his ears, trying in vain to muffle what he is hearing. He opens his eyes and they can see that his eyes are bloodshot. He is currently in the middle of some kind of panic attack or seizure or something, the students cannot make any guesses. Dumbfounded, Christa backs away from the two of them while Shaula reaches out her hand to see if there’s anything she can do to help Ajax. However, she’s hearing the same intense voice and feels the same amount of pain accompanying it. Shaula grits her teeth and holds in her screams as she sees Ajax in deep distress. Tears stream down her cheeks at the intensity of the voice. She continues to reach out to him but realizes that it is futile to try and force him to calm down. So instead, while unable to hear her own voice, Shaula shouts to Christa.

“M– MISS… MISS ROWFIELD, CALL… AAHHHH… CALL AN AMBULANCE! HOW… CAN YOU NOT HEA–”

Christa, finally snapping out of her daze, runs towards the landline attached to the nearby wall of the classroom but stops as she looks towards Ajax and Shaula. Something has changed in Ajax and Shaula’s area of the classroom. Christa doesn’t understand what she is seeing. As the two of them continue to feel intense pain, the air around them starts to shimmer. The sight is very similar to the shimmer of heat that can be seen around the exhaust pipe of a bus on a hot summer day. The mirage effect covers Ajax and Shaula specifically, not just the area where their desks are. An optical shroud forms that obscures their bodies. Christa reaches the phone and tries to call for an ambulance. She starts inputting numbers when all of a sudden the lights in the classroom shut off.

“Hello? Hello!?” She doesn’t even hear the dial tone, the phone is completely dead. It should be connected to an emergency power source in the event of a blackout but still it’s not working.

Some of the students watching the new phenomenon accompanying Ajax and Shaula scream at the sudden power outage. Others who are a little more prepared immediately run towards their backpacks containing their phones, placed at the front of the class during the exam. They want to either call emergency services or take video of Ajax and Shaula. Christa also runs towards her desk where she kept her own phone, but finds that her phone is turned off. She tries hard to turn it on but she cannot. It should have been at 90% when she left her home in the morning, it doesn’t make sense.

You are reading story The Children of the Divine Limit at novel35.com

Shit!

“M-My phone won’t turn on! What the hell is happening?”

“Mine too! What about you, Kate?”

“Fuck! It should be at least 60%, how can it not turn on? I only bought it last month! Did all our phones fucking break!?”

Christa looks towards the students who are holding their phones right now. They also seem unable to turn their own phones on as well. All she can think right now is that whatever caused the sudden blackout wiped out their devices too. She looks back towards Ajax and Shaula. The two of them are the center of all this; she wonders if the blackout actually had something to do with them as well. It is unbelievable, she wouldn’t have believed it if she wasn’t in the room right now with them. The shimmering air is harder to see at this point because of the sudden darkness in the room and the curtains being closed. However, the air that was shimmering has also changed. It now starts to glow in a somewhat sickly looking rainbow pattern. It looks a bit like the refractive rainbow patterns that form in puddles of industrial runoff, manifesting on the surface of the shimmering air.

Some of the students head out the door in order to escape this unknown and potentially dangerous scene. Christa and a few of the students move to open the curtains so they can have a clearer view of what’s happening to Ajax and Shaula. The moment new light enters the classroom the rainbow pattern is dispelled and the class can see Ajax and Shaula clearly once again.

“Ms. Rowfield, what’s… what’s happening to them?”

“I don’t know, Jonathan, I seriously have no idea. I-I just thought they were sick, but all of this freaky nonsense starts happening too! We need to get them to a hos–”

“Wait, look! T-They’re…!”

Ajax and Shaula stop screaming. They slowly open their eyes and raise their heads. The voice is gone now; the intensity crescendoed until stopping suddenly. It sounded like the end of the speech to them. Both of them feel weak and their heads still ache, but they aren’t in the intense pain they were in earlier. The two of them notice that the curtains are open and that the lights have gone out for the first time. Neither of them know what to make of this situation.

They feel better. The voice is gone. It’s over; whatever this is, it’s over. The voice has indeed stopped. After all, the magic can truly start only after the incantation is concluded.

You can find story with these keywords: The Children of the Divine Limit, Read The Children of the Divine Limit, The Children of the Divine Limit novel, The Children of the Divine Limit book, The Children of the Divine Limit story, The Children of the Divine Limit full, The Children of the Divine Limit Latest Chapter