Nasty situations look brighter in the light of the morning sun.
Now, this assumption is not always a truth. And it is actually quite false in this particular case.
Remember that nasty thing that liked to file away information for later use? Well, it had spent the better part of the morning sitting on a toadstool out by the lake. When it wanted to, the nasty thing could make itself quite small—good for sliding through rabbit holes and into people’s ears.
It was pretending to be a toad so that it could eat flies with a long, winding tongue. Not that it couldn’t eat flies any time it wanted to, but catching flies just wasn’t as much fun without a great big lolling tongue to flick, flop, and twist about.
The nasty thing had no true shape. It had to make do with stealing other creatures’ shapes when it wanted to be seen. Mostly it liked being left to its own devices, so it chose to remain shapeless. In this state it was like a clear, undetectable gas.
After filling itself with a number of fly souls, it ceased being toadlike. It returned to the school, settling itself into a crack in one of the exterior walls of the West Wing to take a nap and digest the fly souls.
The nasty thing subsisted on the souls of the creatures it captured—little creatures like flies and beetles and spiders. But once, a long time before it had found its home at the New Newbridge Academy, it had eaten something big. And it had never forgotten the taste—and the power. The magnificent power the “something big” had given it.
Now the nasty thing, asleep in its crack, woke up with a start. It smelled something. Something big.
It puffed itself up and slipped back out into the midmorning air in search of its newly smelled prey.