Briar's POV

I was royally fucked. The train that Xerin and I had ridden on had broken down in the middle of the track, several kilometers away from Skeleton Keys, so we had to either wait for the train to be repaired or walk. Waiting wasn’t an option- no engineer was willing to come this close to the cursed school. So we walked. Luckily, neither of us had brought a huge amount of luggage. We pared our belongings down to one suitcase each, and set off on a mountainous, arduous hike that caused us to abandon our bags halfway through and pray we could even make it to the academy. So Xerin and I arrived at Skeleton Keys dead tired, late, and devoid of anything but the clothes we were wearing. We were lucky again, though, because it was the day before term actually started, so we hadn’t missed anything. Finding the rooms was another problem, though. Xerin and I set off in opposite directions, because after several quite heated arguments we weren’t on the best of terms. I saw an extremely tall, muscular guy and a smaller girl disappearing around a corner, but the corridors were so ridiculously long that by the time I reached the spot, they had already vanished, probably into their rooms. I glared at the golden key I had been given, intending to destroy it as the source of my problems, only to find the red stone set in the top glowing a bit. Raising my head, I examined the keys on the doors with new interest. Gold and green… silver and amber…  gold and blue… gold and amber… silver and blue…  gold and red! I wondered idly how many people had discovered the properties of the key after they had wandered around for half an hour and finally found their rooms. ‘How irritating’, I thought before I realized I was wasting time daydreaming in the corridor. Americans call them ‘halls’, but the school was made out of stone. Hall is not a word used to describe a cold, grey passage lit with what appeared to be torches, although they were probably the work of a Light Elementalist. I shook my head, dispelling pointless thoughts, and unlocked the door. The room was fairly spacious, since it was meant for three people, but it was minimally basic. Two of the beds were already claimed, and their occupants stared at me, plainly a bit startled. One was the tall guy I had seen before, shaggy brown hair falling in his face, and the mattress visibly indented where he was sitting. I mentally noted to NOT get on his bad side. Ever. Even if I was a stronger Elementalist, he could probably beat pretty much anyone with nothing but brute force. The other guy was smaller, with dark blonde hair that was falling in his face a bit, and looked extremely introverted. I sighed.
“Um, hi?”
They both stared at me as if I was speaking another language.
“You both speak English… right?”
The tall guy smiled suddenly.
“That is the most awesome accent ever! You’re from Ireland, right?”
Surprised, I said, “Yeah. I’m Briar.”
The other guy surprised me by speaking.
“I’m Caleb, and that’s Tyron. We wondered when you would get here.”
I walked over to the bed under the window.
“I can have this one, right?”
Tyron nodded. I seated myself, leaning against the wall.
“The train stopped running. I had to leave all my stuff and hike up here, so being late wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind.” I glanced pointedly out the window, at the hostile environment of the mountain. Neither of them pressed further.
“You’ll probably be able to get more stuff, maybe through ordering or whatever. I don’t have much either.” It was true. Caleb only had a slightly deflated, tired-looking backpack.
“Thank god. Now she can finally shut the fuck up,” I muttered, thinking about Xerin. The other two stared at me blankly.
“What?”
I looked a bit sheepish for a moment. “There was a girl on the train with me, who was also headed here. We… uh, argued. A lot.”  
“What was her element?”
I stared at Tyron, outraged. “Why would I ask her that?”
Caleb facepalmed. “We’re at Skeleton Keys. This is where we train our powers, not pretend they don’t exist.”
Maybe there was more to my new roommates then I had originally thought.