The Arch Stone: Foxway Academy: Book 1

by Adam Faulkner

  “Matt, now!” I shouted.

  Matt released the spell, the wall dropped. Raven opened her eyes and made the final move. She pushed forwards, and the flames around her flew forward, shooting through the air, just like the phoenix it was named after, and crashed straight into Elijah Blake. He did manage to bring up some shadows to take some of the force, but it really didn’t do much. Elijah was thrown through the air, crashing into the steps outside the school.

  “Raven, you okay?” I shouted. She’d definitely lost a lot of energy after the attack, but she was still standing. She nodded lightly as she tried to keep her footing.

  “Is that it?” August asked as she and Matt ran over to me.

  “Somehow I doubt it…” Matt admitted.

  “No, you’re right.” I looked over at Elijah. He was already standing up. “He’s not going to be down for long…” I admitted. “So, let’s give him hell…” I walked over to the steps. Elijah had already gotten back up, but he was definitely weaker.

  “You… You’re going to pay for that!” He swung his arm, sending a huge blast of shadow hurtling towards me. Matt put up a wall to block it. Elijah threw another attack. August fired another blast of lightning at him, slowing him down even more. I started constructing a spell, but I was knocked back by a large, though thankfully blunt, shadow. I bit my lip as I regained my footing, but it hadn’t shaken me too much. The plan was working. Raven’s attack had worked. He was weak. We could actually do it. I felt the arch stone glowing against my chest. Elijah saw it too. I knew what it meant. I could feel the energy in me, more power than I’d ever felt. Elijah sent another shadow flying towards me. I swung my arm, and without even thinking a bright blast of light sliced it clean in half. Elijah’s eyes widened in terror. I looked down at my arm and laughed.

  “Oh, you are so fucked…” I flicked my hand forward with all my strength. Another blast of light fired out and knocked him off his feet. Another blast knocked him back further. I regained my breath, getting ready for another attack. Huge mistake. My hesitation gave Elijah time to get back to his feet. He fired another shadow at me. I jumped to the side, and the attack missed anything important, but not without slashing deep across my face. I tried to hold back the pain and push my mind off the injury, as blood trickled down my face. Elijah pushed himself back to a good footing and laughed.

  “Did you really think you could beat me?” he asked. “How adorable…”

  I clenched my fist and threw it forward in anger. A beam of light shot from behind me, just barely missing his head. Another beam. Another miss. Elijah laughed again.

  “Oh, I’ve shaken you now, haven’t I?” he mocked. I stepped back and took a deep breath. “I can see it. You’re scared. You know you don’t have a chance of beating me. It’s just obvious. You’re a child. You’re weak. You’re not special.” I stood, still as a statue. “What, no clever response to that?” he questioned.

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re right. I am a child. And, I am weak. Really, I’d be nothing without this stone. I already let you take one friend from me, and by the looks of things you’ve done a pretty good job at trying to take more.” I clenched my fist. “I’ve spent my whole life feeling like I wasn’t enough, feeling like there was nothing special about me, and feeling like there wasn’t anything I could do to change that…” I looked straight into Elijah’s eyes. “So, tell me, Elijah Blake… Is that supposed to hurt me?” I wiped the blood off my face and started walking towards him.

  “Come on, you couldn’t beat me before? What makes you think you can now? You’re not a hero, Emilie George. You’re not some superhuman who always saves the day. You’re not special.”

  I stared straight at him, any hesitation in my mind gone.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  I fired another blast of light at him. And another. And Another. And Another. I didn’t give him time to respond, until he was lying on the floor, with no energy left to fight with. I used my ice to form restraints around his arms.

  “You know, I’d genuinely love to kill you right now, Elijah. I think Raven would probably say the same. And Matt.” I looked over at my friends, who were walking over to where I was standing.

  “Then… why… don’t you?”

  “Matt, what do you think?”

  I knew he was feeling even more angry than I was. I had to give him a chance to get some kind of payback. He lifted his foot and planted if squarely in Elijah’s stomach. He stamped down, again and again. Elijah spluttered. He didn’t have any strength left to pretend it didn’t hurt.

  “That was for Leigh…” he stepped back and clenched his fist, though not before leaving Elijah with one more kick.

  “You know, there is one thing that I don’t get.” I knelt down and picked up the Arch Stone that was around his neck. “Why would you be chosen to be a Guardian?”

  “It knew… I wanted to be powerful…”

  “I guess we’ll never really know how they work…” I stood up and flicked my hand, bringing a beam of light up to his throat.

  “Emilie, no!” Raven shouted. August tried to pull me back. I sighed and flicked my finger a little. The light sliced through the string his stone was around. I picked it up and stepped back.

  “I’m not going to kill you, Elijah. That’s not the right thing to do,” I admitted. “But you’re going to get up, you’re going to call your men off. You’re going to leave. And you’re never, ever, going to come back. Or I will finish what I started.”

  I turned and walked away. Matt and August followed me, but Raven stayed to watch Elijah get to his feet. I turned around and watch from a distance.

  “Raven, you can’t avoid this forever. You know we’re right. Come with me, come back to the Syndicate.”

  “You are my brother… Much as I wish I could change that, I know that that won’t change…”

  “I knew you’d come around eventually…” Elijah smiled. “We are family, after all.”

  Raven shook her head.

  “You’re not my family.” She looked over at the rest of us. “Emilie is my family. Lucy is my family.” She looked back at Elijah. “You’re just a monster.” She placed her hand on his cheek. “Archaeus… Invoco… Elementum… Ignis…”

  Elijah screamed in pain as flames enveloped Raven’s hand.

  Raven stepped back.

  “Goodbye, Elijah.” she turned and walked away, leaving her brother to tend to his burns. We watched as Elijah stumbled away.

  “Retreat!” he screamed into the air like an animal.

  We stared as a swarm of Syndicate agents flooded through the courtyard and towards the main gates. Elijah was the last person to leave the Foxway campus. He turned and looked at us again, before disappearing, hopefully forever.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched him disappear.

  “So, is it over?” August asked. I shrugged.

  “With Elijah? Maybe… With the Syndicate? I… I kinda doubt it…” I admitted. “Elijah wasn’t working alone. We know there must be someone on the inside who was feeding him information…” I sighed. “I don’t think this is the end of this…”

  “We’ll find them.” Matt confidently assured me. “We’ve gotten through this… I think we can probably get through anything.”

  August nodded.

  “Agreed.” Raven smiled. I wiped a mixture of blood and tears from my face. I looked down at my dirty, ripped prom dress.

  “Shit…” I groaned. “This was really expensive…” We all laughed as we stood in the dark of the courtyard. The fight was over. The Syndicate were gone. We won.

  *

  I flinched as Doctor Birchwood cleaned the blood on my face.

  “You know, you do seem to be making a habit of this… Coming into my office with some fresh new laceration for me to deal with…” he joked. I laughed a little.

  “Yeah, I think I’ll take it easy on the whole ‘fight to the death’
thing…” I decided. “This is going to scar, isn’t it?”

  “I imagine so, unfortunately…” Birchwood admitted. “I’m sorry I can’t do more to help it…”

  “It’s fine… I’ll live…” I sighed. I heard the door open, and Matt and August walked in. “Oh, hey guys… Where’s Raven?”

  “She’s gone with Artemis, to take Mary to a hospital.” Matt explained. “We thought we’d see how you were.”

  “Well, apart from having to deal with a massive scar across my face, not too bad, all things considered…”

  “Hey, if there’s one thing that history’s taught us, it’s that you can’t be a badass magical hero without a scar.” Matt joked.

  “I guess you’re right…” I laughed. “I need to sleep for, like, a month,” I groaned.

  “I think you’d certainly deserve it.” Another voice came through the open door. It was the professor. “You’ve all been through a lot over the last year,” Greyford admitted, “and I can’t pretend to ignore the fact that I am partially responsible for getting you all into this… But, it seems, you were perfectly capable of the task I put you up to,” he admitted. “Miss Flamel, Mr Silvemist, I would recommend that you two get back to your rooms. Get some sleep.” Matt and August nodded in agreement.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, Emilie.” August waved as they left the room. Greyford sat down on the chair next to the bed as Dr Birchwood finished dressing the stitches in my face.

  “So…” Greyford sighed.

  “So, what?”

  “You defeated Elijah Blake…”

  “Yeah, looks like it…”

  “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks… That actually means a lot…” I admitted. I wasn’t expecting him to say something like that. Even when he’d apologized for all of the bad stuff that had happened, he always felt… disconnected. I did believe that he cared about his students, but he didn’t always come across like it. “So, do you think it’s all over?”

  “I wish I knew… I believe that Elijah Blake isn’t an immediate issue… But I’m still worried about the Syndicate. They’re powerful people, and they control powerful people. I think we’ve got a long way before we can say we’re completely safe, though.” He sighed. “So, what are you going to do in January?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just… With an incident like this, it’s very likely that a lot of students will be… less than likely to come back next year,” he explained. “Are you one of those people?”

  “No, I’m not,” I instantly replied. “This place… It’s given me so much this year. It’s the first time I’ve felt really at home somewhere, except my actual home…” I admitted. “This year’s been hell. No doubt about it. But when it all comes down to it… My place is at Foxway.”

  Greyford smiled. A very rare sight.

  “Good.” He nodded. “In that case, I’ll let you get some rest.” He stood up and walked towards the door. “Goodnight, Emilie.”

  I laid back in the infirmary bed and thought about what had happened. The voices were quiet, which was nice but strange. Then again, there wasn’t much sense in trying to work out the logic behind them most of the time. I closed my eyes, trying to get a bit of rest before I had to go home and face my mother…

  *

  My mum screamed when I walked through the door. She jumped over the sofa and threw her arms around me, squeezing just a little too hard.

  “Oh my god, Emilie! The school called and said something had happened! And your face…” she rambled. “Are you okay?”

  “I mean, I can’t breathe, but other than that…” I wheezed. Mum relaxed a little.

  “Sorry…” she apologized. “So, what happened? You look like…”

  “I really don’t want to get into the details right now… Long story short, fighting, monologing, and a very bloody face…”

  “So, good dance then?” Mum joked. “Sorry… I’ll let you get some sleep. But you are going to tell me everything tomorrow, got it?”

  I nodded.

  “Sure…” I smiled.

  I honestly didn’t care to argue. I didn’t care about anything else right now apart from my bed. None of the shit that had happened mattered anymore. We were safe, and, while we all knew that the Syndicate weren’t going to stop any time soon, our fight against Elijah Blake was over. And we’d won.

  50

  The day after everything had happened, the Saturday, the first thing I did was to go to see Mary in the hospital. Finding it was a pain (I had to go through Foxway to find out where she was, though that did give me time to pick up Matt and August) but eventually, we were all standing around Mary’s hospital bed. She was going to make a total recovery, which was frankly a total miracle, with the amount of blood she’d lost, and she was surprisingly close to her normal self, all things considered.

  “So, how are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Oh, fine. It’s not like I’ve got a huge gaping hole in my side or anything,” she joked. “Nah, I’m feeling like shit. But, I’m around to feel like shit, so I can’t really complain too much.”

  “Have you heard anything from Hannah?” Raven asked. Mary nodded, and pointed to her phone (Which had a fresh crack through the middle of it). I picked it up and flicked through her messages. The latest one was from Hannah:

  I’m sorry, but I just can’t keep doing this. After everything that happened yesterday, I need to try and forget about everything. I’m leaving Foxway behind, and that has to mean leaving you behind as well…

  I put the phone down and tried to hug Mary. “I’m sorry…”

  Mary sighed.

  “I’m fine… I think… Truthfully, things weren’t that great anyway… I think it’s for the best…” she admitted. She definitely looked tearful, but she didn’t look too devastated. “No, I can’t blame her for leaving.”

  “Are you going to go too?” Raven asked. Mary shook her head.

  “It’s not the school’s fault. I don’t want to let something like this ruin everything. Besides, it’s my last year of school next year. No point giving up now,” she shrugged. “There aren’t going to be a lot of people who see it that way, though. It won’t just be Hannah… Do you know if anyone, you know…”

  “They haven’t told us anything,” Matt replied.

  “If there are any students who didn’t make it, they’ll tell us, but they’re gonna want to keep this under wraps…” August decided. “I wonder what my father’s going to say about all this…”

  “Do you think he’d pull his funding?” Mary asked.

  “No, but he’s not going to be happy with the professor. A lot of the affiliates and governors will be gunning for him…”

  “He’ll be fine,” I decided. “Professor Greyford’s been in charge as long as he has for good reason.”

  “So, what’s everyone doing over the holiday?” Mary asked.

  “I’ll probably be dragged to some bullshit party full of rich pricks sucking up to me because of my father…” August groaned. “I’d rather stay at school…”

  “I mean, I’m probably gonna end up spending the whole time in bed, so I’m almost jealous…” Mary complained.

  “Even that’s better than mine’s going to be… It’ll be hard for us this year, without Leigh…” Matt trailed off.

  August put her arm around his shoulders.

  “It’ll be okay… You can always call me if you need to talk. Especially if I’m out…”

  Matt smiled and hugged August back.

  “What about you guys?” Mary asked me and Raven.

  “I… I’ve never really done Christmas before, to be honest…” Raven admitted. “Too much else to worry about, I suppose…”

  “You’ve never done Christmas?!” I gasped. “Good job I’m around, then!”

  “I… I couldn’t…” Raven mumbled.

  “Listen, for my entire life, Christmas has just been me and mum, on our own. Like, once my grandparents were there, an
d every other year’s been the same. And it’s not like I don’t love spending time with her, but it’s really not that special anymore… But now I’ve got a sister. Now you’re around, we’ve got someone new to get excited with… We’re going to spend Christmas as a family, okay?”

  Raven thought about it for a second and nodded.

  “Okay.”

  *

  The rest of the year shot past. Raven spent the nicest Christmas I can remember with me and my mum, and after everything that had happened, we finally had the chance to just relax, letting the last couple of weeks disappear away without anything to weigh our minds down.

  I couldn’t stop smiling when I found an invitation in the post to the Silvemists’ New Year’s party. It had only been a couple of weeks since I’d seen everyone, but it was still nice to be able to catch up with them.

  “God, it’s been a hell of a year, hasn’t it…” August sighed as she spun a glass of champagne.

  “That’s putting it lightly…” Matt half-laughed.

  “You know what, it has been…” I agreed. “But we made it. And I’ve got a feeling that next year’s going to be much, much better…”

  “What makes you say that?” Raven asked.

  “Just a feeling, I don’t know… I mean, it can’t exactly be worse than this year…”