Arielle jolted out of bed, unceremoniously dumping herself on the ground.
“Ouch,” she groaned, wiping her forehead where a goose egg was probably growing.
“What was that?” Lyra asked. She was sitting up in bed, eyes wide, which told Arielle that she didn’t dream that shout into existence. Someone on the lower floors had screamed like they were dying.
“I don’t know,” she said, getting to her feet and heading to the door.
“Wait, Arielle.” Lyra also scrambled out of bed. “What are you doing?”
“Going out to see what’s happening.”
“No. Are you crazy?” Lyra stormed forward and put her hand on the door itself, as though to bar it from opening, her gaze alarmed. “Don’t you remember what was said at the assembly?”
“What?” The only assembly they’d had was about the demons and the campus's safety measures regarding them. It warned people not to take unnecessary exeats and that there would be scans upon return from any off-campus trips.
“Oh, I forgot, you weren’t here for the orientation,” Lyra said. “First years are ordered to stay put if we sense an attack on campus, until we get further instruction."
“That doesn’t sound right,” Arielle said. “What if someone is seriously hurt?”
“And what are we supposed to do as first years?” she asked. “The fourth years are allowed to go out and help, and maybe some third years, but first years can't really do much but get in the way. Besides, they probably already triggered the lockdown sequence.”
“What lockdown…” Arielle glanced out the window, and her words died as she saw a ridiculous amount of orbs, arranging themselves in several layers in the atmosphere so much that there was barely any empty space between them. They were crowding the air, moving, scanning, probably performing a bunch of security functions she didn’t understand, but reminded her somewhat of Yseult’s spells.
Then she glanced down and saw that some of the orbs entered the walls, passing through, a network of them laced over the door.
When she tried to open it, it didn’t budge.
Arielle bit her lip and felt impatience riffling through her body. Staying put was the rule. She didn't want to break the rules, but that scream had sounded so close and so horrifying. It sounded like someone was dying.
What if the other help didn't come on time? What if they were in danger now, and no one was doing anything?
She didn’t want the vision to be her future. She didn’t want to do nothing when she could have done something.
"Arielle, just relax," Lyra said. "Some of the professors have left for the long break already, but I’m pretty sure Professor Llywyd and Woden are still here, along with the custodians and the dean. Nothing can happen on campus without their knowledge. The demons won’t get you here.”
Ari swallowed and remained standing with Lyra. They listened to the silence as the seconds ticked by, their bodies stiff, tension oozing off of them. A full minute passed without another sound, and Lyra bit her lip, letting her hand slide down the wood.
“Maybe it was just someone having a nightmare,” she said. “It’s probably not–”
Her words were cut off by another scream, this one even louder, even more gut-wrenching.
Arielle couldn't wait anymore.
She went to her desk and grabbed her wand, then assessed the door, searching for a good place to break the spell.
“Arielle,” Lyra asked. “What are you do–”
Ari said a placeholder word to appear like she was casting a ‘spell,’ but really, she only pulled apart the security feature sealing the door shut, allowing her to open the door and “[Blink]” through.
“Ari!” Lyra shouted as she closed the door and put the spell back together.
The handle turned several times, but Lyra was left inside.
Ari dashed out into the hallways, following the path of the scream that sounded like it came from right below them.
When she got to the first floor, she saw that Rava, Garrick, and Llywyd were still in their nightgowns. They all had their wands drawn. Professor Llywyd was in the doorway, talking to someone inside the room, and the others stood behind her, magically scanning the atmosphere and murmuring code words to each other.
Rava saw Arielle first, and frowned. “Arielle. What are you doing outside of your room? It's lockdown.”
Ari said, “What’s happening?”
“What is she doing here?” Garrick wondered aloud to Rava who shrugged. Both looked at Arielle strangely without answering her question.
The lockdown spells were still floating in the atmosphere like glittering stars shifting and moving, nearly crackling with energy. It was filled with Luxa-detecting lattices and Calor-heavy components ready to eviscerate intruders. Ari wondered if lockdown happened automatically at the scream, or if someone had to trigger it, perhaps by using a secondary spell.
“Where’s the dean?” Llywyd asked, without looking at Rava.
“He’s checking the perimeters and summoning someone,” Garrick said. “It doesn’t appear to be a demon attack, as none of the sensors have been triggered, and they were able to get through the barrier. But the dean said it might be–”
Another scream echoed down at the other end of the hall, and higher, maybe on the third or fourth floor.
Arielle ran toward it.
Or at least tried to.
She heard a muttered "[Air Chain]", and a rope of wind circled her, trapping her hands and keeping her still.
Garrick.
She turned to face the man who hung back as Rava rushed to where the scream was coming from.
“This is no place for a first year,” he said.
“I can help,” Arielle insisted.
“Or you can hinder.”
Arielle’s forward dash had put her in view of the doorway where she finally saw who Professor Llywyd was talking to. It was a boy with his hands over his ears, trembling and quaking, while another one lay passed out on the floor.
“That’s it,” Llywyd was saying. She had moved further into the room and was kneeling by the boy. Arielle could tell she was using a spell to try and calm him down. “Just tell us what happened. What did you see?”
He shook his head. “N..n…nothing,” he said. “I saw nothing.”
“You had to have seen something,” Llywyd said. “Come now, Clemence. You didn’t scream for no reason.”
The boy’s eyes strayed to his roommate’s body, who was still knocked out on the bed. Llywyd must have known what he was looking at because she said to him, "It’s okay. Desmond is still alive. He’s just unconscious. He appears to have fainted from intense fear. He's not physically harmed and will wake up soon, but you need to tell me what happened."
Clemence shook his head and said, "Desmond...he was retching, and his body was contorting, and then he passed out. I told him not to do it. Told him not to go there."
"Not to go where?"
"N-n-n–" He was stammering so hard he couldn't get the words out. He squeezed his eyes shut again and said, "Something was here.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it, but it was…it was…” His teeth started chattering so loudly that he could barely speak, and Arielle scanned the room. There was nothing here, at least not right now. No convergence of any special types of essences. It was all normal.
Except maybe…
A thought suddenly struck Arielle.
“This thing,” she asked. “Did it feel…wrong?”
Somehow Ari’s voice reached the boy even though Professor Llywyd had been speaking at the same time. His eyes met hers, and he nodded frantically.
“Yes,” he said. “It felt very, very wrong.”
Oh no.
"Did Desmond go to North Base?" she asked. "Is that where you told him not to go?"
Professor Llywyd had now turned to stare at Arielle, as the boy nodded frantically.
"Yes. Him and the rest. They...they thought..."
Ari didn't wait for the rest of what he had to say.
“[Spell Breaker],” Arielle uttered, ripping through the ropes that held her. Garrick shouted out a protest as Ari caught the essences and dispersed them so he wouldn’t be hit by backlash.
She was already running in the direction Rava had taken when Garrick cast another binding spell, an earthen cage, which she countered with “[Space Null]”.
She used [Blink] up the side of the stairs and sped toward her location.
There was yet another student crouched in their room with their hands over their heads, and one more who was passed out on the ground.
Woden was with this one. Rava was casting yet another scanning spell.
"I can't see anything," Rava said, frustration lacing her voice. "It’s not even telling me a creature was here minutes ago. What on Earth is happening?"
“Where's the dean?" Woden asked.
"He’s summoning someone.” She glanced out, towards the central courtyard. “I think Valeria and Flintwick just arrived. They’re securing the third and fourth year dorms. I should go to second year. Start the Cepioni Protocol.”
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“I don’t think we should do that. If it’s moving through our current barriers without detection, then Cepioni won’t work.” He brushed his chin. “This thing seems to be going from room to room targeting students and triggering panic attacks, without physically hurting them. We don’t know what it wants, but it might be easier to catch it if we bring everyone out toward the courtyard. That way, if it truly is targeting students, we can keep an eye on everyone at once and lure it out.”
“It’s not just targeting students,” Ari said. “I think it’s targeting those who went to North Base.”
That was when Woden seemed to notice her presence. He frowned. “Why are you out here, Arielle? I thought lockdown was initiated.”
“It was,” she said. "But more importantly, I think I know what’s attacking us and how it’s remaining undetected.’
“How?”
“Is there currently a spell that can detect creatures in the abyss?”
Woden and Rava shared a look.
“I think the dean said there might be one,” Rava murmured. “But it was difficult to cast, and he would need help. He planned to work on it with a guide over the break.”
“Whatever is on campus is moving through the abyss,” Ari said. “It can keep its presence perfectly shielded until it's ready to be known."
"And how do you know this?" Woden asked.
"Because I'm the one who discovered it, in the North Base cave." She didn't want to add that she might also have been the one who created it.
The unconscious student groaned and rolled over, but when he opened his eyes, he began to scream again.
Arielle knew the creature wasn't here, so the screaming might have been leftover fear from whatever the creature had done to him.
"It's okay," Woden said, sending out a soothing spell. "It's okay. Let’s get everyone to the courtyard.”
Arielle swallowed. “Professor, can you send me to the cave?"
"Why?”
Because the only thing she could use to identify the creature was the blue orb.
During her last day in the cave, she had tried to bring the blue orb to campus, but it hadn't worked.
Her cores were too weak to hold onto it for very long, and short of casting a spell and carrying it with her through a portal, there was no way to attract it. It seemed to really like its home in the cave.
But she needed it now.
"How is the creature from the North Base cave here?" Rava asked. "The dean said it would be confined there."
"It should have been," Ari stated. "Unless someone went there and somehow brought it back with them."
“How would they do that?”
Ari shrugged.
The crying boy's head snapped up, and he looked to Arielle in alarm.
"Is it a demon?” the boy on the floor whispered.
"No," Arielle said. "It would be much simpler if it was a demon."
The boy gasped, and both Woden and Rava were still staring at her like she had grown two heads.
“Did your roommate do anything when he went to North Base?” Rava asked the boy. “Anything at all?”
The boy bit his lip and looked down at his hands. “Yes.”
“Told you,” Ari said. “Please, one of you must send me to the cave right now, or we won't be able to stop it."
"We can't do that, Arielle," Rava said. "We're not going to put you in danger too."
"I won't be in danger. The creature isn't there anymore. It's here. And I'll only be gone for a second. I'll come right back."
Rava looked doubtful, but when Ari switched her gaze to Woden, she saw something like understanding dawning on his face. His jaw clenched, working slowly, and he glanced at Rava, then back at Arielle.
Before he could say anything, a swirling circle appeared right behind her, and the dean stepped out with a man in a long gown.
He had blonde hair that he’d braided down his back and a bored expression, though his bright blue eyes were especially cutting.
He also held a spherical golden talisman in his hand. It looked ancient and eastern, with intricate carvings all around.
“Get every student to the courtyard,” the dean ordered. “Now.”
“Yes, sir.” Rava rushed into action. Woden carried the two boys and followed.
“I’ll begin my hunt,” the blonde man said, and his eyes only flickered to Arielle briefly before he walked away. Arielle approached the dean quickly and said, “I can help."
“You might not need to,” he said. “Pietro is a Li. He has some experience with the abyssal spells. He’s the one I was consulting on the matter, and if we can find it–”
“If?” Ari countered.
“Yes. It depends on how deep into the abyss the creature can go and how hungry it is for existence,” he said. “Pietro tells me that something like this has not been seen in hundreds of years, and though there is a spell to draw it out of the abyss, he’s not certain he has the right spell form or the capacity. That’s what we were working on.”
“I can tell him exactly where it is,” Ari said.
“No, you can’t,” the dean murmured, reminding her with an arched brow. “At least, you’re not supposed to be able to.”
He must mean that she was supposed to be keeping a low profile. Which she could do while still helping.
“I’ll be careful,” she told him. “I promise.”
The dean hesitated. He finally exhaled deeply before he threw his hand out and generated another portal.
"Go," he told her. "We’ll try to stop it our way first."
Ari only needed a second to recover from the surprise of his assent before she started toward the portal.
Right as she stepped through, she heard another scream, this time coming from the third-year dorms.
She had the impression of the dean disappearing to deal with it, but she focused on the cave in front of her.
It was cold at night, the ghostly wind nipping her nose, drying out her eyeballs.
Goosebumps sprang over her bare skin, and she drew her arms around herself as she spotted the blue orb. It bounced over to greet her.
"Hey," she whispered. "I need your help. You need to come to campus with me."
It bounced again. In response, she cast that light spell that gave her flashes of black-and-white vision. She held it together, refusing to let the spell collapse as she shuffled backwards carefully. Travelling with spells was difficult because the essences could easily become destabilized or incorporated with the portal. Arielle held tight, praying that the blue orb wouldn't decide to stay in the cave, breaking away from the rest of the spell.
Thankfully, it obeyed, and when she appeared back on campus, she looked through the hallway's large windows to find that the courtyard now had people arranged in circles.
It seemed that they had lifted the lockdowns, which made sense since keeping people in their rooms made it harder to track the creature's movement.
The blonde man, Pietro Li, was casting a spell that caused Luxa and Vacu to accumulate into layers and layers of what appeared to be a slender tower, or some kind of lighthouse.
He turned and spoke to Selena, who was standing near him, seemingly giving her an instruction.
Selena nodded and lifted her wand, letting out a flame signal that flared out into the sky. She immediately followed it up with her lightning whips, which scissored around the atmosphere, as though trying to catch something.
It was a beautiful display, but it was a waste of energy, as it could not reach the creature in the abyss. Unless they were trying to get its attention with the fierce magical performance.
"Now," the man shouted a second before the feeling of wrongness loomed over them once more. It was so much more intense than Arielle remembered, so much worse.
It made her blood chill, her heart stop. It felt like it was about to eat her alive, and it wasn’t even close to her. She could only imagine what it had felt like to those it haunted.
Arielle immediately began scanning the atmosphere for the creature. She saw it a second before it moved.
The Dean couldn't have known where it was coming from, but he seemed to sense that another student was the target, throwing himself in front of the student and holding up the talisman he'd probably gotten from Pietro.
The talisman rapidly gathered an array of Luxa and Vacu, and it seemed to break through the creature's shell of nothingness, peeling it back to reveal what it was actually made of.
Collections of Vacu clumped together like gross tumors. It didn’t look like a living thing. It looked like an abomination.
How was it hiding itself? How was the talisman revealing it?
Selena cracked her whip again towards it, but it had no effect on the creature, which was able to draw its curtain of nothingness and disappear once more.
The blonde man gritted his teeth, raising both hands in the air, as though casting an incantation. His light tower trembled and shifted the more he built on it.
Ari's vision flickered back to normal as the creature retreated into the abyss. She heard the dean giving instructions, and saw Telip standing to the side, with his dark sword and shield. They had arranged themselves according to the years, with the fourth and third years on the outskirts and the first and second years huddled in the center of the circle.
The teachers were at all the corners, wands drawn.
Ari waited for the creature to show itself again, hoping that it would happen before her detection spell elapsed.
"Hang on," she said as the orbs of her spell began to tremble, tired and wanting to break. "Just hang on."
The wrongness flared again, and this time, her vision flashed to exactly where it was.
"There," she said, right as Selena sent another lightning whip towards it, following the blonde man’s instructions.
Just like with Vittoria, Arielle took control of Selena's spell, combined it with hers, and arced the lightning slightly so it hit right at the creature.
The creature screeched this time, loud and lethal. Her fear expanded, but Arielle kept the lightning focused on it, even as Selena increased the intensity.
It tried to escape, tried to retreat into the abyss again.
No, Arielle thought. Don’t let it escape.
Luckily, the blonde man’s light tower chose that moment to work, shooting a light at the talisman in the dean’s hand that was then reflected onto the creature, keeping it stuck.
Selena let her lightning burn until the creature's screaming stopped.
Once it did, the air was still again, and the wrongness receded. Arielle stared at the atmosphere that hung with its wasted Vacu essences, knowing they had killed it once and for all.
She released a breath as her spell finally broke and the blue orb bounced toward her, exhausted.
"Thank you," she said as it rested on her forearm for a second, then bounced toward the portal again, ready to go back to the cave. She also said her thanks to the rest of the orbs in the atmosphere.
Then she went down the stairs, briefly debated going to her room, but realized it might seem strange if they took some kind of roll call and she wasn't at the courtyard.
She attempted to sneak into the crowd undetected.
"That was amazing, Selena," someone was saying, regarding Selena with a deific awe. "You saved us"
"How did you do it?" someone else asked. "None of the Professor's spells seemed to work."
"Her spells are superior. That’s what Master Li said. It's probably because of the intensity of her lightning."
"Arielle!" Lacey called, and nearly everyone's attention turned to her. They fell silent as she approached.
"Hey," she said, and no one answered, except Lyra, who rushed forward and grabbed her elbows.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "Where did you go?" Her eyes were wide and confused, with panic reaching into them.
Arielle didn't want to say, so she simply shrugged.
"Was it a demon?" someone asked.
"It was not," the dean said. "It was a nulloid."
"A what?"
"It's an extremely rare creature of the abyss," Pietro Li said. "Not even a creature, really. An anomaly, an experimental aberration that sometimes happens with rare abyssal spells. Not typically dangerous but very annoying. Our reality usually corrects it with time. It's something that should not exist, and if it remained unacknowledged, it would have starved out of existence. However, someone went to Northbase and performed a demonic ritual because of some stupid, unfounded rumor they heard, and so they fed it unknowingly, anchoring its existence and attaching themselves to it, thereby attracting it to campus."
Students gasped. One of the fourth-years pointed at Arielle and said, "Was it her?"
"It was not Arielle," the dean said. "Arielle first discovered the anomaly while she was cleaning at North Base, and she reported it to me. I immediately consulted my old friend from the Luxarium, Pietro Li–” He gestured toward the man. “And he advised it would be easier to let the creature ‘starve’ itself out of existence than it would be to get rid of it. That was the reason we banned access to North Base. Foolish of me to believe that you students would be wise enough to respect that restriction, particularly on the last day of the semester." He glanced at a third-year boy, who looked embarrassed as he looked away. "The creature was specifically going after those who had fed it. Arielle was not one of them."
"So where was she during the attack?" Faulkey asked. “Everyone was supposed to be in the courtyard.”
“I thought I could help,” Arielle said.
“Did you?” Pietro Li said, his gaze bordering on sardonic. “Help that is.”
The dean’s face was nearly unreadable, but Arielle thought she knew what the right answer was. She clenched her fist, reminding herself not to look up.
"No," Arielle lied. "I didn't."
The dean gave her a small smile, then clapped.
"Well," he said, "I suppose that’s as exciting a conclusion to the semester as we could hope for. Thanks to my dear friend Pietro, we were able to kill the creature." The dean turned to Selena and said, "Selena. Come to my office tomorrow morning."
"Thank you for your help," Pietro said.
Selena looked pleased, raising her nose in the air with a crooked grin. "It was nothing. I'm just glad I was here to help." She glanced at Arielle, then at the third year coolly. "It's a shame that stupid rumors led to this mistake."
"Yes, it is truly a shame," the dean said, but there was something funny about his tone, and cool in his gaze as he regarded Selena. "Everyone, back to your rooms. And as for you five, we'll decide your punishment later."
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