by S T G Hill
Marta had a smell, too. It reminded Ellie of burnt plastic, but much sharper.
Marta raised one hand. It began to glow, the power within her pulsing in angry lines on her wrist. Ellie had never seen that happen before.
And she certainly didn't want to be touched by it.
"Don't look so repulsed," Marta said with that light European accent.
Ellie turned over onto her back and tried to scoot away in a crab-walk. Marta's grin widened.
Then she grabbed Ellie by the ankle.
Immediate and intense pain shot up through her leg, like nothing she'd ever felt before. It was the sort of pain that caused a cold, greasy sweat to start on her forehead. The sort of pain that made her want to scream, but locked her throat.
"What are you?" Marta said, her eyes wide. The irises were violet, just as Ellie had thought.
Then it started in earnest: the draining. Every muscle in Ellie's body clenched tight. It felt like Marta wanted to rip her soul out, and didn't care if it got a little torn on the way.
"Oh, does it hurt?" Marta said with a few clicks of her tongue. Then she laughed. Her purple irises glowed.
Her whole body started to glow, as though lit by some inner light.
My light, Ellie thought. Insofar as any thought could penetrate the shell of pain that Marta had transformed her body in to.
Behind her, Sybil could do nothing but stare. Tears collected in her eyes and pooled there until they spilled down her cheeks.
Then all sound just seemed to stop. Like it had been soaked up by a giant sponge.
Even Marta noticed, despite her violent eyes beginning to roll back.
Ellie recognized that look. It was a junkie look. It was the way an addict’s face went when they began to nod off after getting their fix.
But whatever had happened wiped that look from her drawn features. She let go of Ellie’s ankle.
Then Ellie felt the pressure in the air. It pushed in at her ear drums, the silence deafening. She pushed herself away from Marta.
When she turned around she saw what had stopped her attacker.
Aurelius Cassiodorian stood at the top of the swell that could barely be called a hill, maybe two hundred feet away.
He held a gnarly old staff in one hand. As Ellie watched, he wrapped the fingers of his other hand around it.
Then he bowed his head. His gray robes began fluttering around his body.
END THIS NOW!
The words slammed their way into Ellie’s brain. They hit Marta so hard that the witch recoiled backwards, catching herself before tumbling onto her back.
The onslaught around the campus waned. The bursts of magical explosions in the air quieted.
Then they redoubled.
Cassiodorian lifted the staff up, then slammed it down against the ground. The entire world seemed to shake.
Then a strange and terrible shape coalesced into being behind Cassiodorian. The air around it crackled with power.
The shape unfurled a massive pair of wings and lifted its long-snouted head up atop a slender neck.
Marta scooted back, her booted feet slipping against the grass. “What is this? There’s not enough power left in the world for this. Where did he get such magic?”
The dragon was a thing of pure energy. Its scales glistened with it. It stretched the sail-like expanses of its wings, the fine webbing of them lit from within.
And its serpentine eyes glowed brightest.
Then it leapt into the sky, pushing off the ground so hard the world shook once more. When it beat those wings in the air, incredible gusts of wind buffeted the campus.
Somewhere, a squad of attackers dared to oppose it. Tangled lances of energy shot up from the direction of the athletic field.
They glanced from the dragon’s scaly hide. It fixed those terrible eyes in the direction of the attack.
Then it unleashed a torrent of white fire from its mouth. Nothing else tried to attack it from that direction.
They watched it sweep low to the ground and gather up some of the attackers in its huge claws.
A low, roaring cheer started up on the campus. Ellie couldn’t tear her eyes from the spectacle.
The dragon made short work of the attack, gathering up those terrible people and bringing them towards the Magister’s Hall. Those that didn’t retreat immediately, that was.
Marta regained her senses and jumped to her feet. Then she flickered away, teleporting hundreds of feet at a time.
When she left, her hold on Sybil also dropped. Sybil fell to the ground, dragging in deep, sobbing breaths. Ellie pulled herself over to her friend and did her best to sit up, supporting Sybil’s head in her lap.
“It’s okay, they’re gone now,” Ellie said.
She looked towards Aurelius Cassiodorian. She was the only one to see the aged sorcerer collapse onto his knees, gripping hard at the staff for support.
Fires burned all over the campus, casting a harsh orange glow into the air. The breeze carried the smell of the fires.
Behind her, Vine Hall had crumbled. Several other buildings looked in about the same state, or close to it.
Her ankle still burned. She pulled the leg of her jeans up a little and winced. An angry red handprint encircled her skin.
“Who were they?” Ellie said.
She didn’t ask what they wanted. She knew what they wanted.
Chapter 14
The following morning, the three Primes and the Magister called the entire student body and all staff to the amphitheater, which was the only building large enough to hold them all.
It was a massive semi-circle of tiered stone seating, all looking down on the center stage.
Ellie and Sybil sat three rows up beside each other.
“There’s so many,” Ellie said.
There had to be at least a thousand people. Students ranged in age from grade school to late teens.
Of course, aside from the attack itself the main topic of conversation around them was the dragon.
Red-robed kinesists moved through the crowd, their hands glowing as they treated minor burns, cuts, and scrapes.
They’d been at it all night apparently.
Many of the students bore red handprints similar to the one on Ellie’s ankle, and the marks left only stubbornly.
The crowd quieted when the Primes all came out, Magister Cassiodorian leading the way. They moved slowly because of this, and Aurelian took the single step up onto the stage with great care.
Parker Stonebridge waved at a spot on the stage and a chair sprang into being. It reminded Ellie of a dining chair, with its cushioned seat and straight back.
Cassiodorian sank down onto this chair and gripped his knees.
Ellie remembered the way he’d fallen to his knees in the field, holding himself up with that weird old staff.
She could also empathize with that sort of exhaustion.
“Quiet,” Master Shaffir said, unnecessarily.
No one in the crowded seats spoke. Everyone simply stared at Cassiodorian. Ellie guessed that no one here had seen a magical feat like that before.
From what she could tell, most sorcerers didn’t even seem to think that such things were even still possible.
Though she also understood Shaffir’s perhaps overzealous shushing. People hadn’t even really begun to recover from the attack. Nerves ran thin and tempers ran hot.
“We are still here,” Shaffir said, looking around at the crowd, “Despite the ferocity of the unprovoked attack on our campus, not a single student or member of the faculty lost their lives last night, thanks to the quick reaction of senior students and faculty, as well as the Magister’s intervention…”
The entire audience rose as one, Ellie among them. The applause was like a continuous thunderclap. Ellie could barely see over the heads of the people standing in front of her, and was glad of the steep design of the seating.
Shaffir raised his hands for silence, but it didn’t come.
Magiste
r Cassiodorian levered himself out of his chair, his body trembling like a rusty old hinge that didn’t want to swing.
The applause deepened.
Arabella went to him, offered him a hand and a shoulder, but he waved her off.
He lifted one hand to about hip level, which was apparently all he could manager, and waved it gently.
The clapping cut off.
“Please be seated,” Aurelius said, his voice crystal clear thanks to the excellent acoustics of the amphitheater. No magic required.
He didn’t continue until everyone sat.
“It is true that everyone survived,” he started, “But not everyone is with us here today. Some wounds even magic cannot heal instantly. Some destruction leaves behind a terrible fallout that can’t be rectified with a spell. Please listen to Master Shaffir.”
He couldn’t hold himself up any longer. This time he accepted Arabella’s offer for support in helping him sit down once more.
Cassiodorian is weakening. Belt would mop the floor with him, Ellie remembered Thorn telling her.
Great magic took its toll. Ellie hadn’t wanted to believe Thorn on that. She’d believed in the Magister’s ability to challenge Belt right up until she saw Cassiodorian collapse on that field.
Inside, she knew Belt wouldn’t have sweated that dragon spell one bit.
That thought put a damper on her celebratory mood.
And where is Thorn?
Shaffir raised his arms again to silence the murmurs rippling through the crowd.
“They were Errants,” Shaffir said, “Sorcerers with no allegiance to anyone or anything but their thirst for magical power. They must have grown truly desperate to attack a place like Sourcewell, but addiction is a powerful magic all its own…”
Ellie looked down at that awful red handprint on her ankle. She thought of Marta’s gaunt face with its sunken eyes. She shivered.
The magical world wasn’t so different from the normal world after all. There were even magical junkies.
“It will take time to rebuild the shattered halls. Massive magical attacks like those we saw last night leave, as the Magister put it, a fallout behind. Magical residue that taints the area and prevents restorative spells from working to their full potential.
“For that reason, students displaced will be moved to other accommodations on campus. You’re going to have roommates, people.”
A collective groan wound its way through the student body.
“Great,” someone muttered nearby.
Ellie was a little irritated, sure. But even bunking with someone else on the campus would beat any of her foster homes.
Besides, she wanted to know more about these Errants.
Shaffir lifted his arms, the sleeves of his robe slipping down. “You all now have your new room assignments. Classes will resume as indicated. Make certain you go to the correct building, as some courses have been shuffled around due to the destruction. Go now.”
He lowered his arms.
“What’s he talking about? Oh,” Ellie said. A thick and crisp scroll of paper had appeared in Ellie’s hand.
She looked around. Everyone else had one, too.
Unrolling her scroll, Ellie scanned down the paragraphs and swallowed hard. She nudged Sybil, “Why can’t they just fix Vine Hall again?”
A mixture of satisfied, annoyed, and downright angry voices rippled through the student body.
Sybil wore a look on her face that matched the way Ellie felt inside. Sybil pressed her lips tight, her jaw muscles working hard while she looked down at her assignments.
Ellie figured everyone in the amphitheater would look first not at their new classroom locations, but rather who they would be bunking with until the end of the semester.
“Magical fallout; they can’t fix anything until it’s disappeared,” Sybil grumbled. “Who’d you get?”
Ellie turned her scroll so that Sybil could read it. Her face pinched up, then she sucked in a sharp breath in that way people do when they feel an empathetic pain, like when someone barks their shin off the coffee table just in front of you.
“I guess Bramble Hall wasn’t as damaged as it looked,” she said.
“Guess not,” Ellie said.
“Man, I actually feel a little better about my assignment now. And hey, things aren’t so bad; at least we’re hall-mates still!” Sybil said, tilting her scroll towards Ellie.
It read Jeanine Harper. She was one of the ones who hung around with Matilda Thurgood, though she normally kept pretty quiet.
“Want to trade?” Ellie said, not even sure if that was allowed.
“Not for that,” Sybil replied, glancing down at Ellie’s scroll.
The scroll that read:
Until your former quarters are rebuilt, your new roommate will be Matilda Thurgood, Bramble Hall, Room 410. What belongings could be salvaged from your former room have already been moved.
“Ugh, how do they even decide this stuff? Was it the magic?” Ellie said. She wished now that her plan to run away had worked. If only to stay away from Matilda.
In fact, she wasn’t certain there were many things she wouldn’t be willing to do in order to stay away from Matilda.
“Who knows?” Sybil said, “Hey, speaking of the magic… when are we going to talk about what you did?”
The churning sensation of Ellie’s disappointment turned into a cold lump of ice in the pit of her stomach.
The breach portal, she thought.
The old Ellie, the one who grifted inattentive movie theater ushers with old tickets, immediately suggested she feed Sybil a lie. Something about spur of the moment panic. Anything that might sound plausible.
But she didn’t want to; Sybil was her friend. Sybil had helped her.
If Thorn were here, he’d be all like, Tell her the lie. Tell her anything to get rid of her. She even heard those words in his no-nonsense voice.
“Don’t tell anyone, please,” Ellie said.
“Of course not!” Sybil said, smiling a little. “But you will tell me, right?”
No, sorry, I can’t. The words were right there. The right words that should come out of her mouth. But Ellie hated that she could only share this with Thorn.
Besides, Sybil still seemed shaken up from being under the paralysis spell. And now she seemed to be emerging from its lingering effects.
“Yeah, I will.”
“Ooooh,” Sybil said, “When?”
Ellie started, but then the pulse of the crowd changed. The hair on the back of Ellie’s neck prickled, and a single word pounded its way over and over into her thoughts.
Trouble Trouble Trouble.
“A portal’s opening!” someone shouted.
Cassiodorian and the Primes had already begun to leave the stage. They stopped, the three Primes moving between the Magister and the breach portal.
Everyone stood up, straining to see.
“Is it more Errants?” someone said.
Panic churned through the crowd, everyone looking for a way off the semicircular seating.
“Calm down!” Master Turnbull said. He stood two rows down from Ellie and a bit to the left, still in the midst of treating people.
His hands glowed while he tapped students on the shoulder. The students touched immediately settled down, their moods suddenly altered by Turnbull’s charm.
Ellie just wanted to see what was happening, but too many tall heads and shoulders stood in the way.
How did the Errants get here, anyway? Did they come by breach portal? Or had they travelled to the school with that teleporting spell that Marta had used to escape?
And where is here anyway? No one had yet told her just where on Earth Sourcewell Academy was.
“Who is it, Ellie?” Sybil said. She was even shorter than Ellie, and even when she jumped up she couldn’t get a better view.
Somewhere back, a green-robed upperclassman levitated himself into the air like it was nothing. He brought his hands to his eyes, a pair of binoculars
appearing in them as he did.
“It’s Darius Belt!” he said.
The panic in the student body shifted to startled curiosity.
Many people sat back down, their assignment scrolls clutched in their hands.
Others stayed standing, wanting a better look at the master sorcerer as he stepped through the razor-edged portal at the foot of the stage.
Ellie wanted to get out, “Do you see a way down?”
“No. Why? Let’s just stay here and see what happens,” Sybil said.
Except Ellie knew things that Sybil didn’t about Darius Belt. And Belt knew things about her no one but she and Thorn did.
It all added up to the fact that Ellie didn’t share the student body’s near-reverence of the man.
“Ellie, just sit,” Sybil said, tugging at Ellie’s wrist.
Ellie leaned down and put her mouth cloth to Sybil’s ear, “Belt is the one who arranged the attack. Don’t ask me how I know; I’ll tell you later.”
Sybil went stiff, and Ellie heard her breath catch. She started to stand.
“Sit down!” Turnbull said. He lifted his hands up above his head, like he was surrendering to the police, then lowered them.
An invisible tug of magic brought everyone still on their feet down onto the benches.
Ellie tried to stand, but it felt like fighting against the world’s strongest elastic band. She briefly considered trying a counter-spell, but decided against it.
One because she still wasn’t certain her power was recharged yet (or how to really access it for that matter), and two, because she didn’t really know any counter-spells yet.
It would have to be some sort of blunt, brute-force attack to break Turnbull’s spells, and anything like that would surely draw pretty much everyone’s attention.
However, she could see now.
The breach portal had opened to the side of the stage, giving another glimpse into that strange study.
As before, Belt and Caspian appeared, walking side-by-side.
Just seeing the two of them made Ellie’s stomach boil. She hated that only she, Thorn, and Sybil knew that he was behind the attack.