by Lan Chan
“We’ll discuss it after your trial,” Jacqueline assured me.
“I’m not going to be kicked out, though, am I?”
Again the two adults gave each other looks. “We’ll have to modify your curriculum,” Jacqueline said. “But, no, I don’t expect that you’ll be kicked out.” I breathed a sigh of relief and walked through the portal before they could change their minds.
14
The portal spat me back out into the courtyard. There were already a couple dozen kids waiting there. I caught sight of Sophie standing next to a withdrawn Fred. She waved at me and weaved through the crowd. “I brought food,” I said.
She took a couple of sandwich triangles gratefully. “Oh my Gaia! How did you even manage to get a hold of these?”
“It’s a long story.” I held out a sandwich to Fred. “How was your trial?”
He took the offered food, looked at it for a second, and then dropped his arm. He hadn’t exactly been the picture of health before, but now his skin appeared ashen. I could see a sheen of sweat glistening on his brow.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to handle this,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Darkness. My trial was in complete darkness. I’m afraid of the dark.”
Sophie gave me a pointed look over the top of his head. Even I could tell that was a strange thing for a light mage to say. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But it’s a lot harder to come up with the goods when you’re scared out of your mind.”
That I could sympathise with.
“I’m sure they’ll find a way to help you get through it,” Sophie said. She licked her fingers and held out her hand for the last sandwich. I passed it to her.
“I’m not so sure. Everyone here is so strong. Why would they bother with someone who can’t even do the thing he’s supposed to?”
I didn’t have an answer for him. In fact, I was the one with the least answers. “I don’t think they can really expect you to just not be afraid of what you’re afraid of,” I said. “Anyway, I’m sure there are things even these people are scared of.”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “Like the Soul Sisterhood.”
“The what?”
She waved away my question. “You’ll learn about them soon enough. They’re like the bogeyman to supernaturals.”
“I didn’t even know that was possible.”
In the time it had taken us to polish off the sandwiches, a few more students popped up. The sky that had been bright this morning was beginning to turn overcast. “Hmmm,” I said. “It looks like a storm might be coming.”
“You’d think they would do something about the weather on a day like this,” Fred said. He took a single bite of his sandwich, turned green and then threw it into the bushes surrounding the courtyard. I almost had a heart attack. When I tried to go after it, Sophie held me back citing embarrassment. I didn’t even care. Wasting food was a number one offense in my book.
A chime rang above us. Or what I thought was above us. It was difficult to tell with the open-air courtyard and so many walls amplifying the sound. The woman that had been at the entrance to the exam buildings appeared behind us. “Students,” she said. “You’re free to return to your dorms.
Hmmm. That was anticlimactic. Fred withered. “Thank Gaia.”
We started to turn towards the doorway with the crowd. “I don’t know why but I thought it would be a lot harder than this,” I said.
Sophie was frowning. She kept glancing around her as though it was some kind of trap. “It does feel a little too easy. I mean, there was just that really basic written exam and then my practical kitchen witch demonstration. I could have done that in my sleep.”
“Speak for yourself.”
She patted me on the arm but the disturbed expression never left her face. “I don’t know. Something isn’t right. Weren’t there a lot more people than this when we started?”
Come to think of it, the courtyard was a bit sparse. I tried to do a quick headcount but I was a little bit too short to get everyone before they slipped through the exit.
“Maybe they were let out earlier,” Fred said. I got the sense that he didn’t really care how it happened. He just wanted out. Now that I really thought about it, I was tired too. The magic circle demonstration had kind of zapped my mental energy.
I was yawning and rubbing my eye when the first scream broke out. In front of me, Sophie stopped walking. I collided with her back. She reached behind and gripped my arm. Too short to see past her and the other students in front of us, I could only rely on my hearing and non-visual senses to give me an idea of what was happening.
Fred plastered himself to Sophie’s side, his arms trembling. More screams from the line ahead of us. I heard footsteps peeling away from the group.
“What’s happening?” I shook Sophie’s arm. She took a step back as though to shield me.
“Something’s going on up front. Can we get back inside the courtyard?”
Somebody was already trying to do that. I could hear the metal lock being shaken but the door wouldn’t budge. Frantically, I tried to find the adult in this situation. But the woman who had greeted us at the front door had disappeared into thin air. Fred was shaking so hard that he made Sophie’s teeth chatter as she spoke.
“There’s some sort of creature blocking the path back to the dorms.” I didn’t know how Fred could possibly get any paler but he proved me wrong once again. Around us, the light slowly began to fade. Fred tipped his head to the side and met my gaze. I heard what he’d said earlier about darkness. His terrified features became obscured in a haze of dark and then became a canvas of moonlit starkness.
“Is that an eclipse?” I pointed up.
“That can’t be possible,” Fred said. He was holding on so hard Sophie’s skin was turning white where his fingers dug into her. She tried to gently detach him, but he was stuck good. It was going to become one of those situations where he was going to drag her down with him as he became hysterical. And boy was he skirting the edge of hysterical.
I pried his fingers off her one by one. His head whipped in my direction, mouth dropping open. I could sense his intent.
“Don’t even think about biting me,” I said. He clamped his mouth shut. I should think so. Of course, as soon as Sophie was free of him, the mollusc started clinging to me. I shoved an elbow between us to dissuade him. I felt terrible when he retracted his arms and wrapped them around himself. It was so dark now that I could barely see in front of us.
“Can you give us any kind of light?” Sophie asked him. It was like talking to a plank of wood. Fred was now rocking back and forth on the spot. Around us, more shouts rang out. During Fred’s meltdown, everyone else seemed to have moved ahead, leaving the three of us standing here.
“We have to get back to the dorms,” Sophie said. “This just isn’t right at all.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I’m not sure. But the last time things got all screwy and confusing like this, the Academy was attacked by demons.
“Don’t they have guards for that sort of thing?”
“Yes, but they can’t guard against everything. Which is why we’re in training. Come on.” She snatched Fred by the front of his shirt and dragged him along as we made slow progress forwards. I could hear the voices of other students ahead but they were muffled as though coming to us through a film of glass. These were not ideal travelling conditions. After a few dozen steps, I almost thought perhaps Fred had the right idea and we should find a place to hold up until the worst of this business was over. I kept waiting for someone official to come charging out from the sidelines to wrangle us all up and take us back to safety.
Around us, half a dozen flares ascended into the sky. They gave us a moment of visibility.
“Thank goodness,” Sophie said. “Someone’s raised the alarms. Hopefully the guards will be alerted and we’ll be out of here in no time.”
We waited. Th
e seconds ticked by without so much as a breeze whipping past. Given that I’d seen more than one magical being teleport, the fact that none appeared wasn’t a great sign.
“Nobody’s coming,” Fred cried.
“Let’s keep going then.” Sophie urged us forward. Despite our slow progress, we managed to get past the sheltered walkway between the courtyard and the front door. Sophie took the lead and carried Fred along like he was a human flesh handbag. I brought up the rear which made it all the harder to see anything up ahead. And then seeing was no longer an issue. A horrible sound the likes of which I had never heard shook the great expanse of lawn around us. It was like the roar of a lion interspersed with the high-pitched whistle of a bird with the rattle of an insect thrown in.
Sophie stopped dead in front of me. Her head whipped around in both directions before she started to back up. She ran right into me but didn’t stop. She shoved me until my back was against a solid surface.
“Get back inside,” she screamed. The whites of her eyes reflected the moonlight. They were so wide her face might as well have been all irises. I tried to fumble for the doorknob only to find that I was sweeping my palms against a smooth surface.
“Where the hell is the doorknob?”
She shook her head and pushed Fred back at me. Something thumped in the distance. I could hear shouting but my head and ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton wool. Fred did the thing that woodlice do and curled up into a ball. I nudged him with the tip of my sneaker. “It would be seriously nice if you could give us some light right now,” I said. He whimpered and ignored me completely.
“No,” Sophie said. “We shouldn’t bring attention to ourselves.”
Somebody else must have been thinking along the same lines as me because a whoosh of red light blazed across the open campus. It was almost blinding against the previous darkness. The light turned out to be fire. It erupted from the unprotected hands of the golden-winged Fae who followed Brigid. Her control of the fire was less impressive than the fire itself. While it shot out in two long beams from her hands, it also spat cinders onto the lawn. Those, of course, caught fire too.
Soon there were more blazes around us. The only good thing about that was that the perimeter was now lit up for us to see. And I kinda wished it wasn’t. Because what we saw hovering just in the distance was something I could only have conjured up in my nightmares. It was a Frankenstein-type creature with the wings of a bird and the head and torso of a lion. Where the tail should have been was a long, black coil with a wicked-looking spine at the tip.
Sophie gave a little sob. “What is that thing?” I asked, backing up involuntarily into the wall.
She swallowed and tried to speak. But her watery eyes were fixed on the monster coming closer to us. Finally, a single word spat out of her scratchy throat. “Manticore.”
I wasn’t sure what that actually meant but in supernatural language it must have meant big-ass scary monster because all of the remaining students backed up and started running. Golden Wings extinguished her hands, extended her wings and zipped out of there faster than lightning. The rest of us flightless losers weren’t so fortunate. I was following the flicker of her wings as she raced away only to see her shudder to a halt mid-air.
She turned in a wide arc, eyes narrowed, face disturbed. She hesitated, looking as though she was going to actually turn back. The manticore roar-screeched again. This time it also stomped a foot forward. Its thundering heel came down on the turf. The softness of the grass should have absorbed some of the impact, but I swear I could feel the vibrations in my hair follicles. Golden Wings turned and fled until I could no longer see her.
“Where the hell are the guards?” Sophie hissed.
“Probably dead,” a boy running up beside us said. His fangs flashed in the moonlight. Not the sharp incisors of a vampire but the razor-edged spines of a predator’s teeth. His eyes had turned an unnatural yellow. Fred peered up at the dark-haired boy and then at the blanketed sun. His voice was barely a whisper.
“You’re not going to turn, are you?” He was clinging to Sophie again. Oh brother.
“It’s not a full moon.” The boy’s brows furrowed. Shifter, I thought. There was no need to wonder what sort because the manticore bellowed again and the boy gave up the reins on his animal. His bones and tendons snapped and twisted. Clothing shredded and muscles elongated until there was a canine crouched beside us. In his shifted state, his hair had turned into a golden tan colour with darker brown stripes running along his torso. I wasn’t sure what I was even looking at until he growled and it hit me.
“Tasmanian tiger,” I breathed. I was sure when he turned his head up to look at me the twinkle in his eye was a wink. But I couldn’t concentrate on the wonder of seeing a supposedly extinct creature right now. Not while there was an enormous monster in between me and the dorms.
“How are we going to get past it?” I asked the world at large. Golden Wings had left us with a legacy of burning spot fires that was edging precariously close to the tree line. There were maybe half a dozen other kids who were ahead of us in the queue and had managed to run. Now we were stuck here like sitting ducks.
“Is there any way we can distract it?” Sophie suggested. A quick glance around showed me there were two vampires to our left, another Fae who for some reason wasn’t using her wings to fly, and a pair of dwarves to my right. They were about my height and solidly built. Both were young but with dark hair almost down to their hips in thick, elaborate braids. What I liked best about them was that they were both packing axes.
“Any chance you know how to use those?” I asked them, pointing to the weapons strapped to their backs.
The one closest to me, the female, snorted. “Of course. You think we’d carry weapons we don’t know how to use?”
“I don’t really know much about anything,” I said.
“Figures,” the other dwarf, a male, said. “That’s why you were chosen last for the Houses.”
I let that comment slide. Right now wasn’t the time to be starting up new grudges.
“This is stupid,” Fred said. “We need to run.”
“If we scatter, it’s just going to pick a target and come after one of us.”
“One is better than seven,” the female dwarf said.
Before I could even suggest the distraction again, she and her companion linked hands and started running. The Fae and the vamps did the same. So did the shifter boy. Sophie and I shared a quicksilver glare before we took off. I grabbed Fred under one arm, Sophie grabbed him under the other, and we started towards where we thought the dorms were located.
The disturbing bellow of the manticore rang out into the fraught darkness of the night. I’m ashamed to admit that I was silently hoping it had somebody else in its sights. By some miracle, we got about fifty metres and a break in the darkness revealed a familiar path. Sophie must have seen the same. “Almost there!” she screamed. But I hardly heard her. Because intermingled with her scream was another that I would know with my eyes closed.
“Lex!” Nanna pleaded. Her voice came from behind us. Without thinking, I stopped running and let Fred go.
I scanned the darkness. My eyes were drawn automatically to the areas lit up by the fire. When I spotted her, my heart kicked against my ribcage. In the clearing just beyond where the manticore stood guard, there was a pyre of twigs and branches. Rising up out of the pyre were seven wooden masts. There was a person tied to each one of those masts. And there, dead in the centre, was my Nanna.
“Mama!” Sophie screamed. She was looking at the figure to Nanna’s left.
We started running back at the same time, leaving Fred standing there with his mouth gaping open.
15
All I could do was watch as an ember from the fires that Golden Wings lit drifted on the breeze to the base of the pyre. By some unnatural force, the kindling set alight faster than anything I’d ever seen in my life. It must be supernatural fire. An insidious rage simmered in
my chest. They’d lied to me. They’d said she was safe with Raphael. And now here she was being tormented by whatever the hell this monster was. I would have run headlong into the manticore had a pair of stubby arms not caught me around the waist.
“Are you daft or what?” the female dwarf said. I struggled against her.
“Let go of me!”
She shook me like a rag doll. I thought of bloody Basil safe in my room while Nanna was about to be turned into barbecue.
“It’s a manticore. It’s almost impossible to kill!”
“She’s right,” Sophie said. “Even if we somehow get close enough to go for a strike, its hide is impenetrable.” Her chest rose and fell. She’d stopped running too but her focus was still on her mum.
“Then how are we supposed to get past?”
“Please don’t draw its attention,” Fred pleaded. I hadn’t noticed him tagging along.
“Why don’t you just run away?” I snapped. He pointed to a tiny man with greying hair. His head bobbed up and down because he was passed out.
“My grandfather is there,” he said.
“How did this thing capture our relatives?”A vampire who’d doubled back snarled. His teeth were no longer hidden by the glamour Sophie told me the vampires liked to use to befuddle their prey.
There was no time to figure anything out because the manticore had had enough of preening and puffing up its chest. A chasm of fear mixed with rage bubbled up in my chest as it reared. It took a running start and then flapped wings that spanned twice the length of my body. It jumped just shy of the mid-way point between us and sailed through the air. If Golden Wings had been fast, the manticore was lightning. I blinked and it was right on top of us.
Everyone else in the group had the wherewithal to scatter. I jumped clear at the same time as Sophie. My body twisted in the air, turning back around as I watched Fred standing rooted to the spot. The manticore’s clawed foot raked him across the chest. It wasn’t even deep enough to gouge but the beast was so powerful that an inch-thick gash opened up his chest.