by Rain Oxford
I led him through the halls, only making a wrong turn a few times. Darwin kept opening doors, which distracted me. We found old magic ritual rooms, classrooms, storage rooms, studies, and bedrooms. Some of them were packed with magic supplies and books, so we decided to return to explore them at a later date.
When we reached the gate and I pushed the blocks in the same pattern as Jasmine had, the gate slid up. “Did they come in here?” Darwin asked.
“Yes.”
The tomb was just as I remembered. As they did the previous night, the torches lit themselves. I stepped inside. “The ward is gone.” Darwin and I searched the room, but we found nothing I hadn’t seen at first glance, except for an inscription on the casket.
“What does this say?” I asked, pointing to the inscription.
“Here lies Vitalis, the leader of the Cult of Obumbratio. It’s Latin, meaning darkness, overshadowing, the unseen, or shading. Without more context, it’s difficult to tell what it means, and a lot of times, it can mean more than one thing. I’ll look it up when I get to my room. The Latin itself means more than the word.”
“Why is that? I thought that was a common magic language.”
“A lot of the blackest magic uses Latin. Much of Christian-based magic uses Latin. Some of it uses Hebrew. The magic language used can help identify the type of magic he practiced.”
“So wizardry and witchcraft aren’t the only types of magic?”
He shrugged. “It’s a complicated subject. Even wizards can express their magic any way they want. People have been doing magic long before wizards separated themselves from humans. There are plenty of cultural and religious influences in magic. Pagan, Norse, Egyptian… the list is miles long. If you think Quintessence is dark, Icelandic magic will make your skin crawl.”
“What about elemental?”
“That’s pagan influenced.”
“Like witchcraft?”
“Elemental magic is fundamental in witchcraft. Elemental magic is all about balance, as is the universe, so while it’s not the most powerful, it’s the most natural. A lot of people believe it is the root of magic, but that can’t be proven.”
“Okay. What does this have to do with Latin?”
“Oh. Right. The Ancient Romans, Pre-Italian Italians, and the church all spoke Latin. This school doesn’t use Latin or Christian magic, but pagan and Elemental magic. That tells me that the leader and/or the person who entombed him is somehow involved in the church. Or he was Italian or Roman. Latin has often been ‘borrowed’ by European magicians for their spells and rituals.”
“That’s probably good to know.” He felt along the rim of the casket. “What are you doing?”
“Opening this sucker up.”
“Why?”
“Where else would you hide the real clues? What, are you afraid of a curse?”
“I wasn’t, but now I am.”
He rolled his eyes and lifted the lid. Inside was a skeleton clothed in a black wizard cloak. I didn’t see anything unusual. Darwin started checking the robe pockets. He even moved the skeletal arm out of the way like it was as normal as a pencil.
“That’s a little crass.”
Darwin scoffed. “Have you met me?” I looked at him, but movement on the wall behind him drew my attention.
“Darwin, close the coffin. We need to go.”
“It’s not a coffin.”
“What?”
“It’s a casket. The lid is shaped, whereas coffins have flat lids. Also---”
“Shut the fucking casket and let’s go.”
When he looked at me, I pointed to the wall behind him, but it was pointless by then; all three walls were dripping with black goo. It was even leaking over the gate.
“That’s bad,” Darwin said. “What is that?”
“I have no idea.”
He turned back to the casket to close it and gasped. “Bloody hell.” The inside was slowly filling up with the same black goo. Darwin slammed the lid down. “Let’s go.” He grabbed the book and we ran for the door. An instant after we were through the door, it shut behind us. We ran all the way to the library.
When we reached it, Dr. Martin and Eugene were still there. “Did you find out what you needed to know?”
“Possibly,” Darwin said, holding up the book.
“Then I release you, Eugene Cecil Greenwood.” Dr. Martin broke the circle by scraping it with his boot. Eugene vanished and the prickling on my foot stopped. “If that is all you need from me, I will go back to tending to the students.” He left.
“It’s been a surprisingly long day,” I said.
“I’m going to read this and I’ll let you know if it contains anything useful.”
“Sounds good.” I checked my watch. “But you should get a sub for your classes tomorrow so you can get some sleep.”
“Nah. Sleep is for lazy people.”
* * *
I unlocked my door and entered my room just as shadows converged beside my bed. “Shit,” I said.
Hunt appeared. “Is this a bad time?”
“No. I was hoping to relax, but these lessons are more important. However, I don’t know that they’re helping.”
“The process is not obvious, simple, or easy. In the end it will make sense.”
“Who taught you magic?” I asked.
“My father when I was young. Then I turned to books.”
Hunt was one of the most powerful wizards I knew, and it wasn’t because he was a demon or because he had special abilities. He actually developed his magic through decades of study and practice. If there was anyone who could teach me the complicated magic, it was him.
“Today, you are going to lock up your power.”
“That’s unexpected.”
“I am going to teach you to direct your mind control in the same fashion as you direct your visions.”
“Oh. With a ring.”
“Except you will not always have time to get a ring out of your pocket. Instead, I will teach you to make a gesture with your hand. You can choose the gesture.”
“What if my hands are bound in some way?”
“Just like with your ring, you will be able to surpass the physical gesture. The ring is a physical tool that puts your mind in a particular state of focus. The gesture will do the same thing. The difference is that I am less lenient in my instruction than Vincent.”
“That sounds backwards. You were the one who played pranks on people. You were the one who tricked people into doing what was best for them.”
“That was my philosophy on life, not on the mind. I believe the mind is the most powerful thing in the world. It is what sets people, paranormal and human, apart from animals. I also believe it is naturally a lazy, slobbish thing that must be molded and pushed and forced into its true potential.”
“Are you sure you should be running a school?”
He ignored me. “You must work your mind to keep it sharp like you work your body to keep it fit.”
“That makes since, I just never expected you to think that way.”
“It is the reason I am powerful. It is also the reason I look half my age, but I will get more into that another time. You are not ready to train your mind to respond to a gesture. Right now, you are still learning to understand yourself.”
“How many more of these lessons will I have to do?”
“That depends on you. Now, clear your mind and focus on the magic inside you that enables you to control minds. You must separate it from the ability to read minds.”
I sat on my bed, closed my eyes, and focused. It was easy to concentrate on my magic because I was used to it. Since my mind control, instincts, and visions were all part of the same magic, separating them was more difficult.
“Create a box in your mind,” Hunt said.
I imagined a steel box and that my mind control abilities were trapped in it. As hard as I tried, I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere. A headache broke my concentration. When I sat up, Hunt stoo
d. “I don’t think it worked,” I said.
“That is fine. It will take time. Exercise is good for your mind and body, but if you overdo it, you will be injured.”
* * *
I saw the frantic man who had killed the older man in my second dream/vision. He was in the Center kitchen, talking to one of the cooks. While chatting with the woman, he reached blindly around her and poured a powder into the teacup on the counter behind her.
Chapter 13
Friday, September 2
“Bro, I didn’t sleep well last night thanks to your homework.”
“What did you learn?” I asked, sitting across from Darwin with my breakfast. We were alone at the table, but the dining room was full of people, so we had to keep it down.
“I haven’t had a lot of time to go through any of the personal stuff, which is fine, because there’s nothing really personal in it. Most of the content is crap. It’s gibberish, it’s religious, and it’s in Latin. That makes it more legitimate. Magic has always been considered more effective when using a ‘classical’ or ‘educated’ language, one that isn’t often used by the ‘commoner’. Grimoires are usually written in some sort of code. On the plus side, the writer’s penmanship is exceptional.”
“Okay, but what did you learn?”
“The Cult of Obumbratio worships ancient gods.”
“As opposed to modern gods?”
“Yes.”
“Thor and Loki and such?”
“Older and darker than that. They’ve been worshiped and written about in stories, but not widely accepted. Zeus, Oden, Osirus, YHWH, they’re all something people can relate to. Yeah, they’re all powerful gods, but they look like people, or people/animal hybrids. There’s a sense of pride and arrogance in people.”
“How are the gods this cult worship different?”
“They’re from a realm beyond ours. This otherworld is nothing like ours.”
“So it’s like Dothra?”
“No. You can describe Dothra to me.”
“What I’ve seen of it, yes.”
“The otherworld these ancient gods are from is so strange to our eyes that we couldn’t even begin to understand them. There wouldn’t just be gods there, either; there would be living beings.”
“Like people?”
“No. Nothing of the otherworld would be recognizable. It would be full of monsters.”
“Okay, so this cult has some unusual interests.”
“That’s not the point of it. The goal of the cult is to bring these ancient gods here. They want to open a gateway into the otherworld. If Patience, Turner, Kat, Leon, Jasmine, and Jessica are going to the tomb and using this book, they’re up to no good.”
“You think the students are trying to open the gates to some other world?”
“Why else would they be down there?”
“Do they have the power to do it?”
“I don’t know. I need more time to look into it.”
“I can induce a vision from the book.”
“I suggest not doing that. You may see far more than you want to. Let me see what I can get from reading first.”
“Well, squeeze a nap in today if you can. I’m going to interrogate Jasmine and Jessica again.”
* * *
After breakfast, I called Jessica and Jasmine into my office. They were a lot more subdued than the first time, as if they realized they were in trouble. They would have been stupid not to, since four of the students involved were in comas and Jessica and Jasmine were probably next.
Both of the girls had bandages around their left hand.
“I know about the secret passageway in the library, the tomb under the castle, and the blood on the casket,” I said when they sat.
Jasmine gasped and put her face in her hands. “Oh, god, we’re getting expelled. My dad’s gonna kill me. He’s gonna send me to live with my grandma in Canada and my social life will be over.”
“There are worse things at stake here.”
“I would rather be in a coma. At least then, people will fawn over me, cry, and talk about how great I was.”
“Shut up,” Jessica said. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What were you doing in the tomb on Tuesday night?”
They both frowned with confusion. “Tuesday? We’ve only been there once, and that was Sunday, August 21,” Jessica said.
Obviously she was wrong, but she didn’t look like she was lying. The kids hadn’t been responsive, so maybe they were under someone’s control.
“What did you do there on that night?”
The girls glanced at each other. Then Jasmine looked down at her hands and Jessica answered me. “We tried to summon our familiars.”
“You’re pretty young to be summoning them. Why the rush?”
“We’re orphans, and no one adopts teenagers. We’ve accepted the fact that we’ll never get families. We wanted to summon our familiars because we wanted to be loved. Our familiars are meant to be perfect for us.”
“I take it that didn’t work out.”
“We weren’t powerful enough. We failed.”
“So you spilled blood and magic, and nothing came of it?”
“Not our familiars, but we did get a pet out of it.”
“A pet?”
“A dog, sort of. He plays fetch with us and gets us food from the kitchen.”
“Where is he?”
“He stays in his room until we call him.”
“Call him now.”
“No. You’d take him away.”
“I’m not interested in taking your pet away. I want to make sure he’s not the one causing these comas.”
“He’s just a puppy!” Jasmine insisted.
“Yeah, he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“We’ll come back to that in a minute. When you were trying to summon them, what book did you use?”
“Get Familiar with Your Familiar, which is the standard book for it.”
I’d read the book and it hadn’t included any weird spells. “And nothing strange happened during the ritual?”
“Nothing.”
“Well…” Jasmine said.
“Well what?”
“Leon said the words in the book changed, but we thought he was lying.”
“What were the words?”
“I don’t remember. We just read it.”
“Alright. How did you find the secret passageway?”
“Patience was trying to light the lamp. Something made it go out, like there was wind. She tripped and pulled it by accident. She said someone pushed her, but there was no one there.”
“Call your dog.”
“No.”
“If you think he’s not to blame, you have nothing to fear. You should call him in here so that I can clear him as a suspect.”
“Fine.” She closed her eyes in concentration. “Blacky, come.”
An instant later, black smoke formed in the middle of the room. While my instincts warned me a powerful entity was forming, I didn’t feel like I was in danger. It only took a second for the shadows to take a mostly solid form.
The creature had the body of a dog made of black smoke with hooves instead of paws and horns. His ears were cropped and his body was athletic like a Doberman’s, but he had a long tail.
“Blacky, this is Mr. Sanders,” Jessica said.
The creature’s tail wagged.
“See? He’s friendly.”
I reached out my hand to pet him. The “dog” glanced at the girls, who nodded, and then stepped forward to let me touch him. My hand went right through him as if he was a ghost. My tattoo wasn’t prickling, though. “How does he bring you things?” I asked.
As if he understood me, his body solidified. Black smoke swarmed around him still. He was softer than I expected a smoke creature to be, but his body was also cool. When I reached out my power for his mind, I sensed protectiveness, playfulness, and possessiveness. I couldn’t get any actual thoughts from him.
I retracted my power. “Alright. You can go to class. Stay away from the library.”
“That’s no chore.” They left with their dog.
I was pretty sure Blacky was the cause of the monster attacks. I didn’t know how exactly, but the monsters started showing up when Patience fell into a coma. Furthermore, they attacked classrooms, and only a few individual students, not open spaces like the dining room, which would make since if the students were out to get revenge.
I updated my notebook with all of the new information.
Out of the blue, my instincts warned me that something was about to happen, but they were unusually vague. I could have wandered around the school, looking for the answer, except this felt too urgent. Instead, I slipped on my vision ring. Instantly, I was no longer in my office.
* * *
My vision was clearer than the involuntary ones. I wasn’t seeing through anyone’s eyes. Ms. Baumwirt and a young girl were in the History classroom. Ms. Baumwirt looked at least ten years younger than I knew her, but it was enough of a difference that I realized she was the redheaded woman who killed her husband.
The little girl was about ten. “I just want to know why you gave me up.”
“How did you find me?”
“Magic. I’m not mad, I just want to know.”
“You have nothing to be mad about! You don’t have the right to be mad! You ruined everything by being a girl! You cost me the love of my life!”
“That wasn’t my fault. I didn’t choose to be a girl.”
“It was your fault! Then you had the audacity to confront me!”
The girl started crying. “That wasn’t what I wanted.” She turned and ran out of the classroom, but Ms. Baumwirt followed her.
“Stop! You can’t tell anyone!”
The girl stopped at the edge of the stairs and turned to her. “I wouldn’t.”
Ms. Baumwirt stopped in front of her and grabbed her shoulders. “You’re lying! You want something from me!”
“I don’t.”