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Confrontation
I am a self-sabotaging idiot. That’s what Eliza told herself as she woke up forty-five minutes late for her first class, having slept through breakfast.
“To be fair, we had a late night!” Pal called out as he trotted alongside her. Eliza was running up the steps two at a time to get to Faye’s dorm room.
“Yes, but now we have no idea whether—” but Eliza slid to a halt as she reached the hall. The Necromancy and Herbalism professors were already there, standing in the doorway teleporting the contents of Faye’s room to a new location.
“Hey!” called Eliza, “where are you sending that stuff?”
Professor Claeg sneered at her, “I would not divulge such sensitive information to a student.”
Eliza banged her fist against the wall, frustrated, and clutched a stitch in her side. Professor Walker touched her arm kindly and said “Run along to your class, dear. And remember to act as though you suspect nothing.”
This took Eliza aback. She had not expected that Principal Crinwere would have told staff of her involvement. Recovering, it occurred to Eliza to feel the injustice of being excluded from the conclusion of a mystery that had marked her first year at Kentree. The likelihood that Eliza would be remembered as having played any important role in the whole ordeal was becoming more obscure. She turned and jogged toward her class. From the third story hall she knew she could go into the North-East tower and use the covered bridge to cross the buildings and get to her classroom faster. Coming to a halt outside Transposition, Eliza caught her breath for a moment before making her way into the classroom. She tried to cross to her seat without drawing any attention to herself.
Unfortunately, her timing was terrible. Students all began to conjure exactly as Eliza made to run across the front of the class toward her usual seat. When she was precisely in the middle of the classroom, cries erupted from all sides and she was promptly covered in every shade of sticky, warm goo—some students conjured what smelled of bubble gum and others a smell horribly like sewage. All the streams collided in the middle exactly where Eliza had just launched herself and she was taken under by the impact. Her whole body was submerged in the stuff. She could not breathe, and the viscosity was so dense she could barely move her arms. She tried not to open her mouth to scream in panic, but the goo was making its way up her nostrils. She felt bile coming up her esophagus, making her want to retch at the sensation.
Just then, all the goo dissolved and Professor Neach remained standing in the middle of the room, wand aloft. “What do you think you’re doing, stupid woman! You could have gotten yourself killed! Go sit in your seat and try to catch up, will you!” Eliza stumbled to her seat, feeling horrible and humiliated. She heard Professor Neach continue to insult her tardiness and stupidity as she sat down and pulled the day’s worksheet toward her.
Eliza did not pay any attention in class, she could not think under what circumstance conjuring goo could possibly be useful. She worried that she was missing her opportunity to thwart Professor Kent from getting access to the information he needed to become a magical tyrant. In the end she was assigned extra homework because all she had succeeded in expelling from her wand was a small squirt of what looked disgustingly like mucus.
She hurried to the Grand Room for lunch, now starving and highly anxious, and was shocked to see Faye sitting at the lunch table, helping herself to fruit and vegetables. Mashu sat next to her digging into a soup, oblivious to anything suspicious. Melissa had not returned to sit with them since the day Mashu’s claw had been taken. Eliza glimpsed Melissa sneaking out of the hall through another doorway with a crudely made sandwich in her hands. Melissa did not look disheveled today. Her blonde hair was braided in a warrior braid on the top of her head, and she had used eye liner to draw runes onto her hands and face. It might have looked ridiculous to someone else, but Eliza knew Melissa had unlocked new ways to bring out what little magic remained in her. When Eliza looked back at her usual table, she noticed Faye’s dark eyes had also been watching Melissa leaving the hall. Eliza approached the round table and sat across from Faye.
“There you are,” said Faye. “Why weren’t you here at breakfast?”
“I overslept,” replied Eliza, serving herself soup and several rolls of bread. “Did I miss anything?”
“No, but I told Mashu about your wand going missing. How was your magic this morning?” Faye’s tone was indifferent, but Mashu looked at Eliza with interest.
“Wha—? Yes, my wand is missing. I wasn’t very good in class this morning, but it might be because I was distracted and arrived halfway through the lesson...” Eliza held her hand over the bowl of soup and concentrated on extracting the heat. With a dull crack, the surface of the soup froze solid. Eliza now focused on directing heat through her hand and warming the soup, which reached a simmering boil a few seconds later. “Looks like I’ve still got it!” Eliza tried to sound relieved, but she was too preoccupied about the next phase of Principal Crinwere and Professor Kent’s plan.
Faye nodded, looking into Eliza’s eyes. The former was in deep concentration and the latter started when Faye’s voice rang clearly inside her head. I know what you’ve done.
Eliza jumped so violently she spilled Mashu’s orange juice all over the table. “What?!” she said out loud.
But Faye was already getting up, “I’ll see you guys later,” she said and floated unhurriedly out of the hall.
Mashu cleaned up the mess of juice with a wave of his wand and looked at Eliza, “If we’ve been targeted as the next victims of the magic thief, Faye’s probably next. They might be waiting for a certain star alignment. We still don’t know how the magic works. They could be planning on taking all three of us down at once.”
Distracted, Eliza said something vague in agreement. Faye was supposed to have been detained in her morning class. She wasn’t sure if she should tell Mashu what had transpired, either about Melissa or Faye. She chewed her lip in preoccupation.
Mashu scratched the side of his hairy face, “We should talk to Melissa again. She’s been researching day and night. She might have some stuff to try but needs more, well, magic to set it into motion.”
Again, Eliza’s reply was in agreement though she hardly knew what she was agreeing to. The memory of Faye’s voice echoed inside her head. I know what you’ve done, she said. Why was Faye still attending classes and meals as if nothing had occurred? What was she planning? Should she not be on the run at this very moment? Anxiety ate at Eliza while she tried to settle on what she ought to do.
Should she try to speak to Principal Crinwere again? Talk to Melissa, who spent these past months desperately trying to uncover the truth? Find Faye and try to convince her of the error of her ways? Wildly, Eliza even considered going to confront Professor Kent but dismissed this option quickly. He was not the villain today, and she could hardly pull him out of the probable confrontation with Faye in order to fulfil her desire to feel like she was doing something. For all she knew, Professor Kent’s proficiency with Sorcery could be the deciding factor should the confrontation become violent.
Eliza had just decided on the unfulfilling option that she ought to study for her exams and hope that the faculty sorted everything out. It was by no means a satisfactory solution, but it was what she had been explicitly told to do. This decision was also exacerbated by Eliza’s inability to conceive of any way she could make herself useful in taking down the threat that had been her trusted friend at Kentree.
Eliza used Transposition to pull a wooden staff from her room that she had been working on in Energy Amplification. She prepared to work on the staff studiously all afternoon. To her immense relief, she was saved from this dull fate when the entire school shuddered as if an earthquake had hit the building.
Springing to action at last, Eliza and Mashu locked eyes for just a second before abandoning all their things at the table and lurching sideways off their seats. They bolted to the door. The school shook again and Eliza stumbled into a few students who darted past her. She glanced up at the hall’s ceiling which she knew to be held up only by spell work and decided to take a precautionary measure. She closed her eyes and guided a protective dome to suspend itself below the magical repair and felt reassured that at the very least should a stone come loose, her additional spell would protect anyone below.
There was chaos when they reached the hallway. Students were running out the front doors. Others cowered in corners. There was much confusion as bodies ran out of classrooms, or else dashed into them. There were some loud screams as another shudder shook the ground and the mass of students who had just been pushing to leave from the back doors were now creating a solid wall as they came running back inside, away from whatever threat they had witnessed out back.
Eliza and Mashu were crushed against a wall by the sudden rush of pupils pushing to head out the front gates. Eliza grasped Mashu’s shoulder, she could just reach him with her arm outstretched, and called “The back courtyard!”
Mashu threw a thick hairy arm around Eliza and threw her into a piggyback position on his strong back. He ran through the swarm of panicked students. Arms wrapped firmly around Mashu’s shoulders, Eliza saw Melissa appear from a hallway that led to the dorms and called to her, “Sweet! Outside! Now!” Melissa nodded. She carried a huge and colourful staff ready in her hands and started forcing her way through the crowd. Mashu was quicker and soon Melissa was lost from view.
Mashu was wide and his short, stocky legs carried him securely. Though the crowd attempted to push through them, he did not trip, fall, or let himself get jostled off course. He gathered momentum and soon students were throwing themselves into the walls to let him pass. Eliza clung onto his broad shoulders without elegance.
They burst outside into the courtyard, into what was becoming a warm spring day. The snow had melted, leaving soggy brown grass beneath the afternoon sun. Birds sang cheerfully unaware of anything strange occurring below them. Only a few panicked students remained in the courtyard; they ran through the manicured garden toward the forest, looking for cover.
Mashu and Eliza were struck by a tremendous beauty floating ten feet above the stone patio of the courtyard. It wasn’t until Mashu gave Eliza a shake that she recalled her position on his back. Sliding down to set her feet upon the stone, she surveyed the scene before her. Faye was suspended in the air. Her arms spread gently on either side of her body, her straight black hair rose elegantly around her as if she were under water.
Emanating from Faye was an electric energy quite unlike any Eliza had ever witnessed in her short time studying magic. Fire and water were the most common ways of expressing magic. Electricity was advanced. The clap of thunder created by the charges of magic was of such strength that the ground trembled. Calm painted Faye’s features despite the unusual circumstances. Beneath her were eight professors and the principal, each trying in vain to contain her.
At second glance, Eliza saw Faye’s lips were moving slightly. Eliza supposed she must be working a complicated incantation. The spell was just beginning.