THAT NIGHT, CAS WENT TO BED MORE TIRED AND content than he thought possible.

As he drifted off, he could think of nothing but continuing the festivities the next day. Warrior had told him that Boxmas (the Balance Lands version of a cross between Waywardmas and Boxing Day) involved twenty-four fantastic hours of stuffing their faces with leftovers and slouching about the Attic in their comfiest pyjamas, seeing who could move the least.

But by the next morning, the happy illusion had been shattered to smithereens.

“Cas, come quickly!” shouted Warrior, bursting into the Attic in a frenzy and shaking Cas awake. “Nurse’s Quarters! Now!”

Before she could explain, Warrior launched herself down the secret slide leading to the library, Cas scrambling in hot pursuit.

Instantly, his mind flew to the worst possible conclusions. Who was in the hospital? Fenix? Paws? Mrs Crane? Had Dr Bane been injured tracking the Master?

His heart simultaneously swooped and sank at the sight of Dewey Cricket’s strawberry-blond head poking out from behind a drawn bed curtain in the Nurse’s Quarters.

The airy room was so fraught with tension that Cas could have sliced it with a knife. Upon entering, Cas and Warrior nimbly nipped behind the bed hangings. Mr and Mrs Cricket sat pale and grave on either side of Dewey, but neither looked anywhere near as pale as their son. Dewey lay curled on the bed, shivering feverishly under a mound of blankets. Even his brightly coloured hair seemed to have dulled with shock.

“What happened?” Cas gaped.

Mr and Mrs Cricket remained silent, stroking Dewey’s clammy hand, whilst Mrs Crane sponged his forehead. They were all still wearing their nightclothes and Mrs Cricket was missing one of her slippers.

Warrior thrust a copy of The Threadly Times towards Cas. “The newspapers are already reporting on it.”

With a sickening wave of dread, Cas scanned the front page:

O VIOLENT NIGHT: WAYWARD WOES AS HERETICS ATTACK

He didn’t even need to read the full article to get the gist.

According to the newspaper, a bunch of merry revellers had been stumbling home from a late night spent celebrating at the Gnome’s Garden pub, when they had witnessed another breach on the wards around Wayward Town. Their accounts were all the same. A troupe of purple-and-white-hooded figures, led by one man in a silver mask, had attacked a patrol of wardsmen on the east boundary between shift changes. The guards had been ambushed, bound and gagged, before the Heretics ravaged and rampaged their way down Newbusy Avenue, setting fire to The Arcadia and vandalizing The Terranical Terrace. Five wardsmen were seriously injured. Two were now missing.

But by the time the Grand Council and reinforcements had arrived, the Heretics were gone. Whether deeper into or out of Wayward Town, nobody knew.

Cas’s heart fluttered wildly. The whole room danced and he felt his forehead sweat as much as Dewey’s. He glanced from Warrior to Mrs Crane, seeing his own panic reflected on their faces.

As if he could sense Cas was about to look at him next, Dewey Cricket spoke.

“He found me,” Dewey gasped in a voice less than a ghost, less than a whisper, of his usual bubbly tone.

Cas didn’t need to ask who he meant.

“He – he had hair like soot and eyes of flame. He s-sounded like a hungry wolf when he growled my name. He wanted to leave a message with someone who went to Wayward School. So he knew it would get to the right person: Tell him. Tell him there’s nowhere to run. He’s mine.”

Cas’s mind flashed back to the homeless stranger he had met outside Captain Caeli’s Cakery. To the ominous feeling of being watched in the Earthshaper woods. To the wards going off on his second night.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, it seemed it was no longer a secret that Cas was at Wayward School.

This time there was no denying it.

The Master of All was coming for Cas.

Fear dogged Cas’s steps all week – but it wasn’t just him who had been scared by the latest breach.

New Year’s Eve in Wayward was a much quieter affair than usual. Normally, Warrior informed him, the streets were buzzing with bright colours and the shrieks of laughter from Life and Deathmaker celebrations. But this year, a new curfew had been put in place. Everyone had to be in their homes by sundown and more wardsmen than ever were brought in to patrol the empty streets by dusk. The Wayward residents were forced to settle for watching an extravagant Firetamer display high above the town from their windows. Cas and Warrior observed the bangs and whistles of exploding rockets from the Attic, occasionally ooh-ing and aah-ing as two Firetamers made a great flaming cat chase a tiny glowing mouse across the black canvas of the night sky.

Up in the Attic, the Master of All felt very far away.

But everything changed when school started again.

The Grand Council had decided it would be safest for all of the Wayward School students to start boarding in the dorms once more, claiming that they would be much safer all grouped together within the school’s wards.

“It’s just a precaution,” High Councillor Hephaestus announced.

Only Cas wasn’t stupid. He and everyone else knew what the Grand Council’s actions truly meant. They were scared too.

Trunk-laden students started flooding through Wayward School’s wrought-iron gates in droves. Security was tightened. Wardsmen were deployed to monitor the school’s boundary and a few were stationed in the odd hallway or corridor. Even Mrs Crane took to sleeping on a camping chair outside the Attic’s entrance, armed with her trusty firefly lantern and feather duster.

Yet rather than being concerned with missing their parents, or the fact that any of them could be harmed – or Cas could be, you know, killed – all anyone seemed to be worried about was whether the Master’s attack would mean something called the Mini Questial would still go ahead.

“What’s the Mini Questial?” enquired Cas, sitting down at breakfast with the others. It had been less than a day since Wayward School had turned into one gigantic sleepover, but he was already sick to the back teeth with hearing about the mysterious event and not knowing what it was.

He was surprised when Warrior answered. Since she had seen the Du Villaines’ butler lugging their suitcases up the entrance hall’s stairs, she had sworn she was going on silent protest for the next week and homework protest for the next two.

“Dits swimple weally,” said Warrior through a mouthful of jammy toast. “The Questial is a big, global competition in the Balance Lands that the Grand Council puts on once a decade. There’s a ballot and each country selected can put forward a team of school students to compete. It consists of a series of challenges in a race across the world, designed to test competitors’ wit and Order abilities, with prizes up for grabs. Plus the usual tosh, such as honour, fame … blah, blah, blah.”

“But the real reason the Grand Council organizes it,” Paws chipped in, “is because they use it as a way to seek out the most powerful, up-and-coming Others who they might want to join their ranks in the future.”

“The Mini Questial, on the other hand,” added Fenix, “is a smaller version of the Questial. Wayward School holds it once a year. It’s, erm, like a special sports day. There’s one relay race with four sections – each containing a challenge relating to one of the main Orders: earth, air, water and fire – and anyone can participate if you have a team of four to compete. We, um, use it to practise until the next real Questial comes around. Teachers can figure out who they might want to put forward and parents come along and watch.”

“Awesome,” said Cas, his eyes shining. “How do we enter?”

Warrior spat out her next bite of toast and Fenix choked on his juice.

“We,” said Paws in a small voice, “don’t.”

Cas couldn’t believe his ears. “Why not?”

“Firstly,” said Warrior, listing off the points on her fingers, “the Mini Questial’s relay consists of four challenges based around earth, air, water and fire. Therefore, it only makes sense that the four members of your team are an Earthshaper, an Airscaper, a Wavebreaker and a Firetamer.”

“OK,” said Cas, mulling this over. “We’ve all still got powers, though. We’ll just have to think outside the box.”

“Secondly, Lifemakers and Deathmakers have never really been allowed to compete. Others belonging to the fifth Order are rare. The teachers don’t want to risk any of them drowning or being burnt to a crisp.”

“Not to mention, um, when there were Deathmakers and the like in seventh year, they could, well, almost kill people,” said Fenix, taking another tentative sip of juice.

“It’s fine. I’ll persuade Hopeless Higgles to let me join in,” said Cas. “Besides, there’s no risk of that, Fenix. I can’t even knock someone out cold, let alone kill them!”

“And thirdly—” Warrior started to say, before she was rudely and snootily cut off.

“You don’t stand a chance.” The malicious, snarky tone of Sam Du Villaine’s voice split the air behind them.

Cas, Warrior, Paws and Fenix swung around in their seats to face him.

“Don’t tell me they’re thinking about entering?” scoffed Lucille, appearing at her brother’s side. She tossed her long, silver hair over her shoulder and covered her button nose to suppress a snigger. “You embarrass yourselves enough on a daily basis by being Abnormies.”

“We don’t need you lot turning the Mini Questial into a freak show.”

“Not to mention you’d lose anyway.”

They both howled with laughter as they took their breakfast trays over to their table, the one furthest away from where the teachers ate, so that they couldn’t be caught flinging toast crusts at the back of Wayones’ heads.

“That’s it,” said Cas, slamming his spoon down on the table. “We’re entering.”

Warrior’s hair flashed the angriest shade of red Cas had ever seen. She ripped off a bite of bread like a rabid animal in agreement.

“I don’t care if we come last,” Cas said. “Or don’t finish at all. We’re doing this. I’m not going to sit on the sidelines and watch the Du Villaines win because we were too scared to enter. Whatever it takes, we’re going to prove them wrong.”

The Mini Questial took place exactly three weeks later.

On a crisp February morning, the whole school marched down to the boating lake, where towering stands full of seats for parents and staff were packed to the brim.

Entering hadn’t been easy.

It had taken Cas an entire day and a half to persuade Headmaster Higgles to let him compete. Only after plying Higgles with persuasive phrases like “think how good it will look to show off the Foretold to the parents after the latest attacks” and “how can I hope to defeat the Master if I don’t compete in the Mini Questial?” and “yes, sir, of course I’ll come and sing at your birthday party next weekend” were they in.

Cas, Warrior, Paws and Fenix submitted their entry as a team of four to Madame Aster with one minute to spare before the deadline.

For once, she didn’t give them a snooty remark or smug smirk. She looked positively thrilled.

“Probably thinks at least one of us will get offed in some way,” Warrior muttered bitterly.

Yet as Dr Bane and Mrs Crane escorted the Abnormies down the sloping lawns towards the steadily swelling crowd, Cas couldn’t help thinking Aster might not be wrong.

For the past few weeks, the Wavebreakers’ boathouse and the Earthshapers’ woods had been out of bounds, meaning all Special Studies classes were postponed. Cas wasn’t sure who this had upset more: the Wavebreakers, who had to sleep with the Firetamers down in the sweaty Kiln; the Mini Questial competitors, who could only wildly imagine what tasks lay ahead; or Puggle the Nuggle, who, deprived of his usual pranking ground, had taken to paddling around the moat surrounding the school and bucking out at the ground-floor classroom windows in protest.

Cas himself had worked extra hard in his last few Special Studies lessons with Dr Bane, determined to hone his powers as much as possible. It felt like the contents of The Book of Skulls and Skin was practically plastered onto his eyeballs.

But would it be enough? What if he failed as the Foretold in front of all these people? Or let the other Abnormies down?

“Take care out there,” said Dr Bane, eyeing them all with the greatest concern in the world. “Especially you, Cas.”

“And make sure you whoop the other teams’ buttocks!” cheered Mrs Crane, punching the air excitedly.

Dr Bane and Mrs Crane took their seats in the front row and Cas felt the vice-like grip on his stomach loosen slightly. The Abnormies hugged each other, wishing one another luck.

We aren’t doing this to win, Cas reminded himself. We’re doing this for everyone who is like us. Everyone who is different, who doesn’t think they belong.

“Are we clear on the plan?” said Cas, as they gave each other one last squeeze.

They nodded, broke apart and split off to their respective start lines.

The exact nature of the Mini Questial tasks had been kept secret until today, but the order of the legs of the race had been released to the competitors last night.

Like Fenix had said, the Mini Questial was a relay race with four stages. Each one consisted of a different Order challenge.

The first leg was a twenty-metre sprint over hot coals. The aim was for the Firetamer in each team to extinguish the flames heating the coals so they could pass the relay baton on to the second team member.

The second leg consisted of an open-top passage with Professor Breezy standing at the far end. It was Breezy’s job to manipulate the air to create a blustery wind tunnel. The second team member would either have to struggle through or bend the air away from them, thus freeing up their path to pass the baton to the third team member.

The third leg was the Wavebreaker one: the third team member had to somehow cross the lake to reach their fourth teammate, who would be standing ready on a pontoon.

Once the fourth team member had the baton, they would have to loop back towards the original start line at the boathouse and complete the fourth task: scaling a smooth, steep hill, before sliding down the other side and crossing the finish line. The idea here was that the Earthshaper in each team would speed up their ascent by using their powers to create hand and footholds in the mud.

Fenix would go first, followed by Cas, Paws and finally Warrior.

Cas took a deep breath and readied himself at the Airscaper post.

“I can’t wait to see you fall flat on your face, Freak Mould,” drawled Sam Du Villaine, limbering up beside him.

Cas gritted his teeth. “Not if you fall first.”

Sam was the only Du Villaine taking part. A quick glance around revealed that Maxwell Snout was the Firetamer in Sam’s team, whilst Quinnberley Crestbourne was the Wavebreaker and Aubria was the Earthshaper. Lucille was sitting stiff as a rod in the stands between her parents. They were being jostled from side to side by the chattering crowd, who were enraptured by today’s commentator, Professor Vulcan, regaling them with tales of his glory days as a famous Flameball player.

“I played sniper for the Wayward Whimsies, you know,” Professor Vulcan told them. “Fifteen times unbeaten Balance Lands Flameball World Champions. After that, I coached the Wayward Whippersnappers Junior Division. Of course, I understand why they banned the sport when all the Lifemakers lost their powers—”

Behind them, Cas spotted Paws’s parents waving a brightly coloured, hand-painted sign bearing the words: GO WAPAWFENCAS!

Cas snorted as Professor Vulcan stood and cleared his throat into a megaphone.

“Competitors,” Vulcan addressed them. “Take your positions!”

All of the competitors lined up on their start lines. The crowd fell silent. Headmaster Higgles, Dr Bane, Mrs Crane and even a reporter covering the event for The Threadly Times leaned forward on the edge of their seats.

“On your marks,” Professor Vulcan boomed. “Get set…”

The whistle blew.

“GOOOO!”

Like lightning, the six Firetamers, one from each team, shot off the start blocks and headed towards the hot coals.

“And they’re off!” Professor Vulcan narrated. “Five of our first team members have already reached the first obstacle, the callous coals.” He spoke in a particularly sinister voice. “And they’re now attempting to quell the flames. Who among them will succeed?”

Every Firetamer except Fenix skidded to a stop where the stretch of coals began and proceeded to whirl their hands around in strange motions, painting invisible shapes in the air. “Nice wrist movement from McClusky,” said Vulcan. “He’s really working well to control those flames; so is Snout … not so much Tsang … but what’s this—”

After a moment of stage fright, Fenix erupted in a roar of flames and tore past the others onto the track.

“We’ve got a rogue one!”

Dashing like he’d been fired out of a slingshot, Fenix ran across the scorching surface, completely immune to the heat at his feet. The hot, sooty rocks were nothing compared to the licks of red and gold that flickered on his skin.

“I don’t believe it, Embershade has taken the lead!”

Cas grinned widely as he realized that the fire from Fenix’s human-torch-like powers was refeeding the fire beneath the coals, giving them a gigantic head start, as the other Firetamers had to work twice as hard to calm the inferno.

“Embershade has come from the back and is ahead, five skips in front, ten skips, twenty … that’ll really take some catching up to beat…”

Fenix slapped the relay baton into Cas’s outstretched hand before two of the Firetamers had even started across the coals.

They were in first place.

Cas launched himself into the wind tunnel, but Breezy’s gust was so strong that it immediately pushed him back out again. Cas shielded his face with his arm in a useless attempt at a buffer, but as he tried to surge forward again, his funny leg threw itself into a spasming action.

Helpless, he watched Maxwell Snout hand the baton to Sam Du Villaine, who pushed back Professor Breezy’s onslaught of air with a single swish of his hand and ran through the tunnel to hand the baton to Quinnberley.

“In a heart-pounding turn of events, the lead has been stolen by Du Villaine,” Vulcan declared. “Darkbloom will have to do better than that…”

Do something, Cas thought, as yet another Airscaper streaked past him, curling Professor Breezy’s wind around them with ease. But what?

“Zunter slips into second!” cried Professor Vulcan.

Think, Cas. Think.

Cas’s powers were useless against an Airscaper’s blustery gale. Not to mention, the only thing that he had confidently mastered was temporarily taking someone’s sight away.

Ah-ha! he thought. But I only need to distract one person.

Cas lowered his arm and focused all his attention on Professor Breezy, who raised his own arms, ready to send another mighty gust of wind Cas’s way.

“Okuli,” he murmured, imagining a dense black blindfold covering the professor’s eyes.

It worked. For a split second, Professor Breezy faltered.

“My sight!” whined Professor Breezy, rubbing at his face. “I can’t see anything!”

“Oh, look. What’s this?” Professor Vulcan’s deep voice speculated, as the crowd gasped in surprise at Cas’s unexpected move.

The wind died just long enough for Cas to escape the tunnel and slap the baton into Paws’s hand.

“Darkbloom’s back in the game!”

Cas smiled wider, glimpsing Professor Breezy over his shoulder and returning his vision in time for Breezy to throw another bombardment of air towards Cas’s rivals. Two lagging Airscapers became trapped in the wind tunnel once more.

“Your turn, Paws,” said Cas, panting.

The girl nodded.

Cas had never seen Paws use her powers in person before. He jumped in shock when her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped forward, utterly still, in the seat of her wheelchair. But suddenly Mogget, the mangy cat sleeping around her neck, leapt up on all fours and waved her paw at Cas.

“See you at the finish line,” said Paws through Mogget’s mouth.

Inside the cat’s body, Paws picked up the baton in her gummy mouth and dived into the lake.

“Crestbourne is charging ahead,” Vulcan called. “Look at that Wavebreaker go!”

Cas observed Quinnberley Crestbourne running across the lake’s surface as if it was solid ground. But Mogget was unexpectedly fast as she paddled through the water, edging towards Warrior on the pontoon.

“Ha ha!” chuckled Vulcan. “It looks like a soggy moggy has entered the race! Who’s carrying the cat kibble?”

“Ew! I’m allergic to cats!” squealed one of the Wayfive Wavebreakers, spotting Mogget swimming on the wave above where she was cleaving a dry path through the lake. The distraction caused the Wayfive to break her focus and the parted water came crashing down, soaking her where she stood.

“ASSISTANCE!” Vulcan shouted loudly, as the Wayfive spluttered and flailed, suckered into the squelchy lakebed.

“Kids these days,” grumbled Madame Aster, striding down from the stands to cleave the water away, before dragging the Wayfive to safety.

“And it looks like the moggy has reached the pontoon!” Vulcan returned to commentating on the race.

Cas whooped when he saw Paws transfer the baton to Warrior.

“Only Snout and Heatherby are ahead of Bane … it’s going to be a tight one…”

They were in third place.

They only had the Earthshaper challenge to go.

Warrior reached the smooth, steep hill in front of the boathouse a long time after the other two. Both of the Earthshapers were ripping chunks of soil out of the mound to create footholds by clenching their fists in mid-air. Aubria Snout was almost at the top, with the other Earthshaper about halfway up.

“Do something!” Cas called over to Warrior. “Use your powers. Think outside the box!”

Bewildered blankness crossed Warrior’s face for a second, before her eyes sparkled with a devilish new idea. She squinted and concentrated hard on the hill, the ends of her hair turning the mischievous shade of orange that meant something brilliant and terrible was about to happen.

The hill gave a great shudder.

Aubria was caught off guard and one of her hands lost its grip, but somehow she managed to cling on. The hill shuddered again. This time, three ginormous holes opened in the earthy surface as clumps of mud and rock plummeted to the ground. Two eyes and a hungry mouth appeared as the hill grew a terrifying face.

Warrior smirked. Picking the edge of the hill furthest away from its mouth, she started to climb.

“What an interesting turn of events!” exclaimed Vulcan.

“It’s not real, Aubria!” yelled Sam from his place next to Cas by the lake. “It’s just another one of her silly, useless illusions!”

But Cas wasn’t so sure.

He knew that some of Warrior’s illusions were nothing more than imagination and vapour, but some of them felt real. They were almost real. They could think and feel and physically interact with the real world themselves. They simply didn’t possess a “real” body.

As Cas watched the hill’s wide eyes latch on to the struggling Earthshaper boy halfway down and its mouth open to gobble him up, he hoped it was the former. From what he had seen of Hobdogglin whenever Warrior tossed him the odd boiled sweet or crumpled-up homework sheet, if the hill devoured the Earthshaper, the poor boy would simply disappear from existence.

Poof!

Gone for ever.

Cas held his breath. The Earthshaper tried to scramble away from the hill’s hungry mouth, before letting go in a panic and falling to the ground. Cas’s heart soared in relief, but then took a dramatic nose-dive when he saw the dangling Aubria use her long, narrow frame to swing herself up. She reached the top of the hill and slid down the smooth far side at the same time as Warrior.

They were neck and neck.

Both girls threw themselves into a run, scrabbling and grappling with every body part they could…

“C’mon, Warrior!” encouraged Cas.

They were both ten paces away from the finish line … eight … six…

A thunderous round of applause exploded as the winner was crowned.

“Aubria Snout has done it. Team Du Villaine wins!”

Aubria threw her arms in the air triumphantly. Meanwhile, the dust cleared to reveal Warrior sprawled on the floor, nursing a kicked ankle, barely two paces behind. Gobsmacked and furious, she hauled herself across the finish line.

Cas supposed he should have felt the same way, but he didn’t care.

They had come second!

With a start, he noticed the crowd weren’t actually applauding for the winners. They were chanting the Abnormies’ names. They were cheering for them.

The Du Villaines might have claimed the Mini Questial, but the Abnormies’ victory was much better.

Against everyone’s expectations, they had done the impossible. They had shown that they could do what everybody thought they couldn’t. It was better than any placing or ribbon. For as long as Sam and Lucille lived, Cas knew they wouldn’t forget this:

The Abnormies had only lost by a hair.