Casander Darkbloom and the Threads of Power

THE GHOST OF CECIL’S WORDS CONTINUED TO haunt Cas for the rest of the day. He had hardly uttered a word to the Abnormies over lunch. His maybe, not-quite-sure, looming doom wasn’t the kind of thing he felt like sharing over sandwiches. But by the time he slipped into his seat beside Warrior in Order Studies, he couldn’t take it any more.

“Who cares what kooky Cecil has to say?” said Warrior, sitting with her legs thrown up on the desk. “Igwe told you himself that his predictions are unreliable.”

Cas’s revelation meant Warrior was ignoring everything else going on around her – including Madame Aster taking the register and repeatedly calling her name. Cas coughed loudly as, with a sharp flick of her wrist, Madame Aster sent a rain-cloud which had been drizzling away in the corner of the room speeding towards them. With a huff, Warrior clocked it and kicked her feet off the desk.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out this was Aster’s unique way of punishing troublemakers.

“But there was that hollow emptiness,” Cas went on. “And those words, the balance is not the equal – I still don’t know what they mean.” He raised his hand when Madame Aster called his name to avoid her wrath. “What if Cecil was wrong about being wrong? What if it does mean—”

Warrior huffed again. “All right – all right. But it’s poppycock. There’s more than one way to interpret a vision.”

“Yes, but if Cecil wasn’t talking about me failing, then that must mean—”

“That you’re not the Foretold?” She rolled her eyes. “Please, that’s insane.” Warrior scooted her chair closer and stared Cas dead in the eyes, her hair tips turning a suspicious shade of forest green. “Are you suggesting the Oracle, the real Oracle, the one who’s been trusted by the Grand Council for decades, is wrong?”

“And are you telling me that you didn’t bring that raven back to life in the curiosity shop?”

Warrior glared at him. “Did you?” she repeated. “Because I didn’t. And I didn’t see anybody else do so.”

“And don’t you trust my stellar, flawless, wonderful, no-way-I-can-ever-be-wrong judgement?”

“See, it’s settled,” she said, throwing her hands up exuberantly in the air. “You have to be the Foretold. You will defeat the Master of All. There’s no other way it can be. The balance is not the equal just sounds like a rip-off of the prophecy the Oracle already made. Only someone with power equal to, or greater than, the Master’s can stop him. Greater than is more than equal, isn’t it? So the balance is not the equal simply means that you’re more powerful than the Master, you just might not realize it yet!”

It was this outburst that pushed Madame Aster over the edge. She scowled, her thin lips poised ready to bite their heads off. She rose from her desk and stalked towards them.

“Mademoiselle Bane, Monsieur Darkbloom,” Aster cawed. “I assume that you’re discussing how you’ve completed all the assigned summer reading.”

“Bon,” Madame Aster spat at them through gritted teeth, throwing down a stack of what looked like surprise exam papers onto their desk. “This will make up half of your grade for the term.”

“There will be no talking!” scolded Aster when she caught Warrior muttering unpleasantries under her breath. Begrudgingly, Warrior passed the stack of exam papers to the next student to hand around. “Un mark shall be deducted for every word you utter. Begin!”

Madame Aster spun on her heel and returned to the front of the room. Everyone bent their heads low and started scrawling on their tests as soon as they received them. Meanwhile, Warrior took the opportunity whilst Aster’s back was turned to whisper, “Besides, I heard that Cecil Igwe’s dog did eat his homework. The dog ate the homework-scoffing hamster, so technically it still counts.”

There were no two ways about it. When Warrior set her mind to something, she didn’t stop until she got what she wanted – even if that was convincing Cas that Cecil Igwe was wrong.

“I believe in you,” she added discreetly, narrowly avoiding Aster’s gaze as it raked across the classroom.

Predictions be damned, thought Cas. If Warrior and the real Oracle thought he was the Foretold, then he could be. If nothing else, he would just have to train hard at Wayward School and make sure that he was ready to face the Master of All when the time came.

It’s fine, he tried to reassure himself as he re-read the first few questions. You’re new to this world. You’ll have plenty of time to pull your grade up. This test is just a chance to see if there’s anything you already know.

But to say the Order Studies test was brutal was an understatement. By the end of the lesson, once Madame Aster had marked all of their tests, Cas had been awarded a big, fat zero. He didn’t have a single tick next to any of his questions, only answers scribbled in the margins.

Question 1: On 6th September, the ending by Others of which disastrous event in the Normie world is celebrated by everyone in Balance London prancing through the streets, drinking Kindlin’ Koola and waving orange streamers?

Answer: The Great Fire of (Normie) London, 1666

Question 2a: Which supposedly fictional character in the Normie world was actually a renowned Reader (someone who can read minds, but cannot interpret a person’s soul or future like an Oracle) and lived at 221B Baker Street?

b: And which Order did he belong to?

Answer a: Sherlock Holmes

b: None. He was an Abnormie

Question 3: Which other allegedly fictional figure belonged to the Deathmaker Order and had to be imprisoned in Nowhere Prison by the Grand Council after he reanimated a monstrous corpse and wreaked havoc on a small town?

Answer: Dr. Frankenstein

Question 4: Name the delicacy that the Airscapers Freyja and Frankel Fairweather are credited with inventing.

Answer: The Bubble Fritter

Question 5: List the different days of the year when the following Orders’ powers are most intense:

a: Lifemakers and Deathmakers

b: Earthshapers

c: Firetamers

Answer: a: New Year’s Eve

b: Spring Equinox

c: Summer Solstice

“Tut-tut, Monseiur Darkbloom,” Madame Aster took pleasure in crooning at him. “Being the Foretold, I would have assumed you’d be more familiar with the world you are supposedly destined to protect.”

“Well, he basically didn’t know we existed before this week,” Warrior said defensively.

After his disastrous first week, Cas was more motivated than ever to work hard and make the following ones better.

For the next few weeks, his classes thankfully passed without any more unusual happenings or ominous predictions, and his mind gobbled up information more greedily than Headmaster Higgles at an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. It also helped that, day by day, he felt like he was getting stronger now that he was in the Balance Lands. His body felt sturdier, his mind sharper and his memories remained intact. As he lay in bed at night, Cas let the memories whizz through his mind like miniature films before he went to sleep, wishing they would keep replaying when he closed his eyes – from every laugh he shared with Paws and Fenix, to every time he had to elbow Warrior under the desk to prevent the teacher catching them talking.

Despite Madame Aster’s attempts to dissuade him, Order Studies soon became Cas’s favourite lesson.

No amount of nit-picking at him for silly things – like not sitting up straight enough or chewing on his pencil too loudly – could distract him from the amazing traditions and secrets the Balance Lands held.

In one fascinating lesson, they learnt about Elementies: magical creatures who had powers like the Others’ own.

“Some believe that originally each Elementie was created to be a perfect counterpart to a specific Other,” Madame Aster told them. “Known as Other Halves, the Elementie and their Other were said to be woven from the same threads, meaning they were destined to be loyal companions. Just like us, Elementies belong to Orders. These magical animals and beings mirror us, in the same way the Balance Lands mirror the Normie world – another way the universe is kept in perfect balance.”

“I wish I could find my Other Half,” sighed Warrior dreamily later that afternoon. “You know, an Elementie made especially for me.”

They were sitting in the library, slaving away over Aster’s homework. The students had been tasked with writing a one-page essay on an Elementie of their choosing. Fenix had chosen one of the Firetamers’ many species of firebirds, whilst Paws had bucked the trend and gone with something outside her Earthshaper Order: the Wavebreakers’ scaly water snake (it turned out, there was a famous one living in a loch in Balance Scotland. According to Paws, the creature used the loch as a waygate to visit the Normie world, where it was called Nessie). Warrior was supposed to be writing about the Airscapers’ grotesque-looking wyverkeys, but instead she kept gazing longingly out of the window, no doubt imagining flying around between a pair of the wyverkey’s leathery wings.

Cas busily rifled through a children’s picture book called Earthy Eddie’s Easy Encyclopaedia of Eclectic Elementies, trying to decide between the Deathmakers’ banshee crow and the Lifemakers’ caladrius. It was the only beginner’s guide to Elementies on the shelves. Apparently everyone else had grown up knowing about these creatures; they were woven into everything from bedtime fairy tales to campfire horror stories, in the same way Normie children were told about Cinderella or the Bogeyman.

“You have to actually belong to an Order to have one of those, Riff-Raff,” Lucille Du Villaine heckled nastily from a nearby table.

“You know, I think I can hear a kind of buzzing,” said Cas sarcastically, as Warrior stuck out her tongue. “But I don’t know what it is. Sadly, we don’t speak whiny brat.”

“She’s wrong, anyway,” said Paws, laying down her pen and pulling a snoozing Mogget into her lap. “Other Halves don’t have to be Elementies. At least, I don’t think they do. I’m pretty sure Mogget is mine.”

“Wyver-whatevers,” said Warrior, waving dismissively, “than a boring old cat.”

Paws raised her eyebrows as if to say beggars can’t be choosers. “Don’t listen to what old meanie Warrior says,” she cooed, fussing over a sleeping Mogget, who didn’t have the faintest clue what was going on.

“Actually, um, Paws is right,” chimed in Fenix, not looking up from where he had already written double the required length of the essay. “You stand a better chance of finding your Other Half in an ordinary animal. There are hardly any Elementies left.”

“Hunting, poaching or, um, wandering into the Normie world and dying out.” Fenix tapped a picture in Cas’s book without taking his eyes off his homework. It was a long-forgotten Earthshaper bird. The label below read: DODO (EXTINCT).

“Some Elementies are kept as pets, even though their owners aren’t their perfect Other Halves,” said Paws. “My parents run a rehoming emporium for injured or captured ones. They’ve got a much better chance of surviving in a loving family than fending for themselves.”

“But most Elementies merely run amok these days,” finished Warrior, eyes fixed out of the library’s window. “Wild, untamed and free.”

In the end, Cas’s favourite part of Order Studies wasn’t the Elementies, or the different Orders’ traditions, or even the famous figures. It was seeing the different Orders’ magic in action. Every few weeks, the class would get to watch one of their peers’ Special Studies lessons, and it was these sessions that excited Cas the most.

One time, they wandered down to the Wavebreakers’ boathouse to observe students like Quinnberley Crestbourne moving puddles from spot to spot, and the Wavebreaker teacher, Professor Oxbow, cleaving a dry path through the water of the lake. On another occasion, they trundled down to the Kiln, a sweltering brick basement below the school where the old Firetamer dorms were located, to see Professor Vulcan (assisted by the Airscaper teacher, Professor Breezy) demonstrate how to make simple fires levitate into flickering orbs and candle flames jump from wick to wick.

“Vulcan used to be a top Flameball champion,” Fenix told Cas, briefly describing the sport, which sounded a lot like dodgeball except with balls of fire. “That was, er, before all the Lifemakers died out and there was nobody to heal the life-threatening burns and scalds that the players got.”

The only Special Studies lesson Cas didn’t enjoy as much was the Earthshaper one.

Traipsing behind Madame Aster to a far wing of the school, the class was confronted with a plain wooden door. From the outside, it looked like an entrance to nowhere – there was no room, ceiling, floor or windows on the other side. Instead, once they had all squeezed over the threshold, they found themselves standing in a canopy corridor made entirely from tree tops. Out of thin air, a gigantic lion made of crisp, fiery autumn leaves appeared in front of them and let out an almighty roar. Then it disappeared in a blazing cascade and the class picked their way along the corridor, which sloped down and out of the side of the school, leading to the homely Earthshaper cabins in the woods. Standing to greet them was Professor Everglade, a waify, willowy woman with wavy blonde hair down to her ankles. She wore a long white dress and nothing on her bare feet.

The teacher looked like an extension of the leafy corridor. Creepers and flowers wove around her arms and legs.

Enchanted, Cas sat down with the others outside Professor Everglade’s cabin, desperate to discover how she had done the trick with the lion.

Digging out her guitar, Professor Everglade poured them each a mug of nettle tea and serenaded them as they spent the afternoon chipping their teeth on rock-hard boulder cakes.

Warrior clucked her tongue. “All this incredible magic and we waste our time singing silly songs.”

Just as he was about to brave his third jaw-shattering confection, he noticed something. The birds that had joined in with Everglade’s tune had stopped singing. Suddenly, Cas was overwhelmed by the skin-prickling sensation of being watched. He swivelled around, but there was nothing but towering trees in every direction. He knew Wayward School’s forest extended far beyond the boundary of the protective wards, but they weren’t in that part of woods now. Still, Cas couldn’t help imagining someone out there, spying on him between the pines.

But they’re not, Cas told himself sternly. You’re safe. Wayward is safe.

By the time the lesson ended, he wished he had convinced himself that it was true.

The only downside to watching other people’s Special Studies lessons was that Cas longed to begin his own.

“Don’t take it personally,” Warrior told Cas for what felt like the umpteenth time. “Dr Bane often goes away on business. If he’s not busy representing Headmaster Higgles and Wayward School at the confederation of this-or-that, he helps the Grand Council track the Master of All. He’s basically obsessed with it.”

This did nothing to quell the queasy feeling in Cas’s gut. How was he supposed to learn to defeat the Master if Dr Bane was never around to teach him?

Warrior shrugged. Her answer changed from week to week. After one such cancellation, she told Cas that Bane was acting on reports the Master had been spotted in Balance Budapest. Another time, some threadologist scholars had allegedly disappeared in Dijon. Though the places sounded far away, Cas knew that only a waygate separated them.

“So, does Dr Bane officially work for the Grand Council?” he prodded one evening.

“Ha! Not a chance,” Warrior scoffed. “The Grand Council is too proper and … restrictive for him. Dr Bane gives them the information he gathers, but he prefers to work solo. Don’t get me wrong, the Grand Council are great at handling disasters in the Normie world. Give them a landslide or tsunami and they’ll sort it out in a jiffy. It’s just that all the High Councillors have to agree on something before they can do it – and you’ve seen yourself how much they argue. Bane doesn’t believe in that. He wants to act now.”

Warrior’s expression turned grave. “Not yet. He always manages to slip away. Although he likes to leave his Heretics behind to finish off whoever dares try.”

Cas swallowed the lump in his throat, bile burning his stomach. Just what kind of evil Other was he up against? How many more people were at risk of disappearing – or worse – if he didn’t stop him?

“Bane doesn’t have Grand-Council-level ambitions, anyway,” added Warrior, sensing Cas needed a change of subject. “I think he’s only interested in running Wayward School.”

Cas stared at her, confused. “Why doesn’t he just take Headmaster Higgles’s job, then?”

It was no secret that Helpless Higgles was exactly as useless as his name suggested. If he wasn’t napping or lingering about whenever something delicious was wafting out of the kitchen, Higgles only ever emerged from his office to parade Cas around the school like a shiny trophy.

He was half surprised Higgles hadn’t tried tackling him with a duster or shoved him in a display case yet.

“Being headmaster of Wayward School would mean the Grand Council is always watching. That’s probably why Dr Bane recommended Hapless Higgles for the job. This way, Bane is still important to Wayward School but he can come and go as he pleases, without anybody paying too much attention.”

Despite how interesting Warrior’s insights into Dr Bane were, it wasn’t what Cas yearned to learn from the Deathmaker. Just when he thought he’d never experience his own Special Studies class, Cas was bopped on the head between classes one October afternoon by a crisp envelope, transported on an Airscaper’s wind:

He was finally going to get a chance to practise his Order powers. How fitting it would be on the most haunting day of the year too.

Halloween – or, as Cas liked to call it, Hallow’tween – was an odd celebration at Wayward.

According to Warrior, the festivity had begun in the Balance Lands as something called Mourners’ Morn. It was a Deathmaker celebration to honour the departed. People used to ooh and aah at the fifth Order’s talents in midnight marvels, where they demonstrated how they could rob the breath from your lungs and even speak to the dead. But at some point, the celebration had crossed over into the Normie world and become Halloween, a day packed full of fancy dress and sweets, before crossing back – except various bits of it seemed to have got wondrously warped on their way through the waygate.

When Cas met Warrior in the dining hall for breakfast that morning, she was dressed head to toe in traditional Mourners’ Morn garb: a thick black veil and long black dress. The ends of the skirt pooled around her short legs so copiously that she had to kick the hem out of the way when she walked to avoid tripping up.

Everyone else appeared to be in some form of confused fancy dress. There was a one-eyed cyclops hag. A werewolf in a wizard’s hat. A mummified gargoyle. A grim reaper with fairy wings. And a zombie with fangs in a high-collared cape. Even Paws and Mogget were dressed up as pumpkins, with Paws sprouting matching cat’s ears and whiskers. Fenix was wearing a fluffy s’mores costume with devil horns, so that whenever he accidentally set himself ablaze, he looked like some kind of satanic marshmallow.

Only the Du Villaines and the Snouts seemed to understand how to do Halloween properly. They rampaged through the halls dressed as ghoulish bats, ransacking bags of chocolates and leaving a trail of empty wrappers in their wake.

“What a load of rubbish,” Warrior scoffed, as she shoved past a Wayone dressed as a schoolboy with a strange squiggle on his forehead. Cas had no idea what he was supposed to be – maybe an Aurelius Academy student? “Doesn’t anyone celebrate Mourners’ Morn properly any more? It’s supposed to be about séances and memorials, not this piffle. Halloween’s just an excuse to stuff your face with sweets and look like an absolute fool – I mean, why do we have to dress like the Normies do? After all we’ve done for them, you don’t see any of them dressing like us!”

After everything he’d heard about the two forms of the holiday, Cas liked Wayward’s version best. It wasn’t the old Balance Lands’ Mourners’ Morn or the new Normie Halloween – it was something different. Something special. Something in between.

Cas felt slightly dejected that he was one of only a handful of people who wasn’t in costume. He’d been too anxious waiting for his first Special Studies lesson to think about it.

When the clock bells chimed three, Cas and Warrior were already standing outside Dr Bane’s office.

“Ah, my two prodigies,” said Dr Bane, greeting them with a wry smile. “Please, come in.”

Dr Bane’s office was a gloomy and curious place. Grand iron cabinets lined the firefly-lantern-lit walls, and a twisted steel staircase spiralled up to his sleeping quarters above. There was a high-backed chair set behind a dark mahogany desk, which was reached by climbing a set of smaller stone steps. Chains, crossbows and numerous pearly white animal skulls hung on the walls. But it was the contents locked inside the cabinets that fascinated Cas the most.

Each cabinet emitted a different coloured glow, the light seemingly coming from the objects within. A greenish hue came from one cabinet containing jars of shrivelled heads and bony fingers. A silvery sheen came from another that held the strange, luminous dish Cas had made react during the Order Trials. Meanwhile, a bronze tinge bloomed from a separate one containing a small, glowing orb surrounded by spinning metal rings. It was about half the size of Cas’s palm. The rings spun faster when he pressed his face against the cabinet’s glass.

“Intriguing, isn’t it?” said Dr Bane, peering over Cas’s shoulder. Today he was wearing a silver-grey suit with brass buttons beneath his purple cloak. “I could tell you all about these weird and wonderful artefacts, of course, but that would take up our entire lesson…”

They both took a seat at Dr Bane’s desk, whilst Bane himself sat in the high-backed chair on the other side.

“This,” he said, pushing a very heavy, leather-bound tome towards Cas, “contains everything you could ever want to know about being a Lifemaker or Deathmaker.”

Awestruck, Cas ran his fingers over the chipped gold script on the cover. “What is it?”

“The Book of Skulls and Skin,” said Dr Bane, pressing his fingers together and nodding towards the tome. “This is how the Master of All began his quest for the Orders’ powers. This is how he learnt to take another’s Lifemaker abilities for himself.”

The corner of Dr Bane’s mouth quirked up in a secretive smile. “There are many strange and powerful things kept at Wayward,” he said. “Wonder and danger often go hand in hand. But this particular object was gifted to us by the Grand Council. Once the Master claimed those Lifemaker abilities, and all the fifth Order’s powers began to disappear, they no longer had any use for it. Why guard an object containing the fifth Order’s most archaic instructions and incantations when the Master has already exploited its secrets for his own gain, and there are no new Lifemakers or Deathmakers who could possibly do the same?”

“But you still have some of your powers, don’t you?” said Cas bluntly. The words escaped him before he realized it was a very personal, and perhaps rude, question to ask.

He reached below his desk and pulled out a potted plant with black-spotted leaves. With one sweep of his hand, the leaves on the plant curled up, withered and died, his skin barely touching its surface.

“Do you know why you have the movement condition with your leg, Cas?” said Dr Bane, slipping the plant back into his drawer before Cas could get a second look.

“Because you’re special,” explained Dr Bane, pointing a finger towards Cas’s chest. “You’ve been directly touched by the threads of power. They don’t just run through your veins; they specifically made you. And whoever the threads touch, they leave a mark on. No doubt you’ve realized that some of your friends are the same with their unusual abilities. But the difference with you – what makes you unique – is that your uncontrollable movements are caused by the energy of your powers wanting to get out. This book” – he nodded towards the tome again – “and I can teach you how to harness that power. How to let it break free and use it for good.”

Cas was captivated by Dr Bane’s words. It was like he could feel the threads of power that made up Bane and the book calling to him.

“The Book of Skulls and Skin is good for a number of things,” said Dr Bane, standing up and moving around the desk to where Cas and Warrior sat. He leant against the polished mahogany and manoeuvred the book closer. “It has a chapter that taught Warrior how to craft and shape her illusions, and that is what we’ll be starting with today: anatomy. Both Lifemakers and Deathmakers control how the body works. In time, you will be able to heal with a single touch … or kill with a single stare.”

For a second, Dr Bane looked like he had to check himself. “Of course not, my dear boy. Regardless, those things are years away from where you’re at now. First, you must learn to visualise and direct your power. There are several tricks that I can teach you to help.” He flipped to a page with a sketch of the human body. “Such as memorizing these labels.”

Hiding his disappointment at not being able to try practical magic straight away, Cas spent the rest of the lesson pouring over anatomical sketches in The Book of Skulls and Skin. It wasn’t easy. He struggled not to be distracted by Warrior, who had already learnt this chapter, as she spent the time perfecting the intricacies of her illusions. Cas couldn’t stop himself from sneaking glances as she created a fearsome smoky jaguar who prowled around the room on six legs and a huge rat with three eyes, and gave Hobdogglin even scalier legs, which gleamed in the dim light with an emerald sheen.

As Cas was getting ready to pack up his things at the end of the hour, Dr Bane stopped him. “Have you memorized at least half of the labels?”

“Then let’s give your powers a try.” The corner of Bane’s mouth twitched ambitiously. “Look at me and only me.” Dr Bane drew an invisible line from Cas’s eyes to his own. “Now, I want you to make me blind.”

Instinctively, Cas faltered. The joy drained from his face as he thought about the Oracle and Cecil.

“No, not actually blind,” Dr Bane clarified, noting his concern. “Although with time, that is a real possibility,” he muttered under his breath. “I want you to make me temporarily blind, so that I can see nothing but black. Invisibly blindfolding someone can be a good way to subdue them if you don’t want to knock them out.”

“Concentrate,” commanded Dr Bane, sensing that Cas’s attention wasn’t all there.

Cas focused as hard as he could. “Okuli,” he murmured through clenched teeth, remembering the label for eyes in the book. He imagined a thick, black curtain falling over Dr Bane’s eyes. He envisioned the light and colour being sucked out of his world as he fell into an endless dark pit.

“Believe, boy. You’ve got to do more than just want to do it – you have to trust that you actually can.”

Momentarily, Dr Bane’s eyes widened and his lips parted in terror. Then, “Bravo! Huzzah, huzzah! You’ve done it.”

The sudden noise knocked Cas’s concentration and the invisible blindfold on Bane slid off. Dr Bane strode over proudly and clapped Cas on the back.

“My boy,” he said. “Do you see? Self-belief is the halfway point to any goal. Think is step one, want is step two, but believing you can, that’ll see it through. We’ll make a damn good Foretold of you yet. Just wait, the Master of All will have no idea what’s coming.”