WHEN CAS AWOKE, HE WAS SLUMPED, HEAD DOWN and drooling, on his desk in Madame Aster’s classroom.

He groaned and peeled a wet, sticky piece of paper off his cheek, grimacing at the slimy gloops of saliva that dripped from it. Warrior was sitting next to him, bent over her own paper, scribbling ferociously so it looked like she was taking notes. In reality, she was drawing various doodles of Madame Aster being chased, burnt to a crisp and eaten alive by numerous imaginative creatures.

“Where am I?” Cas yawned, stretching out his arms under the desk so Aster couldn’t see. Every inch of him felt leaden and achy, as if he had simultaneously woken from a deep slumber and hit the floor from a great height.

Warrior shot him a guarded, sidelong glance. “Second hour of double Order Studies,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “Dr Bane brought you in with some excuse that he found you wandering around the hallways in a daze.” Then she went back to discreetly scribbling away on her paper without another word.

Yep, Cas thought. There was definitely still something off between them since the Scuffle.

Cas nudged her under the desk. Warrior jumped, banging her knee on the underside of the table, and raised her foot to give Cas a swift kick in the shins – but before she could, he whispered, “Don’t you want to know how I got on with Dr Bane?”

His words did the trick. Despite how much she fought it, Warrior’s features quivered into curiosity.

As quickly and quietly as he could, Cas told Warrior everything that he had learned. But whilst Cas couldn’t deny that what he had found out about Bane’s history with the Master of All was interesting, it wasn’t the information he sought.

“Is that it?” Warrior snorted.

Cas let out a low grumble. “Sadly, yes. I didn’t find out anything about what the Master is looking for in the Abominable Archives.”

Truthfully, Cas’s disappointment wasn’t that deep. He was mainly glad of an excuse to talk to Warrior properly again. Her eyes had grown wider and her face friendlier with each passing word.

Turning away, Cas squinted at the blackboard. The lesson topic – Myths and Theories of the Orders – was scrawled in smudged, chalky letters, beneath which was the word Conduits.

“What are conduits?” said Cas, making a half-hearted attempt to pay attention.

“Conduits,” said Madame Aster loudly, overhearing Cas’s question and jumping on the chance to make an example of him, “are magical objects through which the different powers from the threads are channelled.” She frowned sternly. “Feeling better, Monsieur Darkbloom? Or would you like another snooze?”

Near the front of the class, Sam Du Villaine and the Snouts chortled. Surprisingly, Lucille elbowed her twin brother sharply, trying to get him to shut up.

Cas’s neck and ears heated as he shook his head.

“Bon.” Madame Aster spun on her heel, returning to the blackboard. “As I was saying,” she continued pointedly, “conduits are magical objects. Vessels through which the threads of power can be controlled. Would someone like to recap what we learnt at the start of the lesson for Monsieur Darkbloom, and tell us exactly what these objects are?”

Several students’ hands shot into the air.

“Monsieur Embershade,” said Madame Aster.

“No one knows exactly,” said Fenix, shooting Cas a reassuring grin. He answered the question as if he were reciting the answer directly out of a textbook. “Each conduit is a highly coveted, ancient relic. Common belief is that there is one conduit that belongs to each Order. All of that Order’s powers and abilities are channelled through it. People know the conduits exist, but not what they are. Only the Grand Council know, because it’s rumoured that each Order has a conduit-keeper, whom they entrust with the object.”

“Magnifique. And where do these conduits come from?”

This time, an eager Quinnberley Crestbourne beat Fenix to the punch.

“Nobody knows for certain. My dad’s a threadologist, a sort of scientist who studies the threads of power, and he reckons they’ve likely been around as long as the threads themselves.”

“Bien aussi,” praised Madame Aster. “Do you see, Darkbloom” – she narrowed her eyes into slits at Cas – “what you can learn if you bother to show up for the beginning of class?”

Cas sank lower in his seat.

“For many years, Others have wondered about the origins and purpose of the conduits. Threadologists believe they were created as a fail-safe. If an Order should abuse their power, or if a conduit should be misused or fall into the wrong hands – for instance, if the conduit-keeper used the conduit to turn an Order into an army – then the balance of nature could still be maintained by the conduit being taken away from the corrupt keeper, and all in the Order would lose their powers as a result.”

At this, Cas perked up. Lose their powers. A thought unexpectedly and brilliantly bloomed in his head. His hand shot into the air.

“Yes, Darkbloom?” said Madame Aster.

“Does that mean these objects – the conduits – can give people powers as well as take them away?”

Madame Aster sighed. “Some believe so, yes. If the conduits have been around for many years, it is probable that at one point or another, a conduit-keeper may have been the last in their Order and needed to repopulate it. Of course, as Monseiur Embershade said, only the Grand Council and the conduit-keepers understand the exact workings of the conduits, so – yes, Darkbloom?”

“Are any of them kept at the school?”

Before Cas had even finished speaking, the classroom burst into hysterical laughter.

“Why would a conduit be kept here?” Madame Aster sniped, pretending to wipe an entertained tear from her coal-like eyes.

But the question wasn’t stupid to Cas. He and the Abnormies shared a knowing look.

If the Master of All’s aim was to acquire all six of the powers – life, death, earth, air, water and fire – and he hadn’t come to Wayward School looking for Cas, he must have been looking for something that would help him achieve his goal instead.

The conduits sounded perfect.

Cas poked his hand in the air again.

Madame Aster wiped away another tear and her face fell. “What is it now?”

“You said that only the Grand Council know where the conduits are,” said Cas, his mind buzzing, “but what if they get lost or stolen? Or something happens to the Grand Council? Is there a way to find them?”

Madame Aster’s expression turned sour and thunderous.

“Oh no,” moaned Warrior, her face and hair turning as white as a chalk. “Bad move.”

“Why?” said Cas ignorantly.

“Madame Aster’s husband is Ophelius Aster,” hissed Warrior. “High Councillor of the Earthshapers.”

Cas gulped. How hadn’t he made the connection between the two?

I’ve just insulted one of the most senior members of the Grand Council, he realized, his heart sinking into his shoes.

“Monsieur Darkbloom,” said Madame Aster coldly. Her murderous face was turning more outraged by the second. “You may be the Foretold, but I can assure you, the Grand Council know a lot more about how to look after the conduits than you. You are nothing more than a twelve-year-old boy. A nobody with a hero complex and shockingly bad grades in my class.” Sam Du Villaine sniggered at that. “However,” Madame Aster went on, much to everyone’s bewilderment, “is anyone here familiar with the seekerthing?”

Almost every student in the room shook their head.

“I think my dad might have mentioned it once,” Quinnberley muttered in a small voice. “But he said it was a rumour, a myth…”

“What’s a seekerthing, miss?” prodded Neerja Gill.

They all waited for Madame Aster to explain or sketch something on the blackboard, but she pocketed the chalk in her hand instead.

“Nobody knows,” Aster admitted, flopping down at her desk with a casual shrug of her shoulders. “Unlike the common belief in the conduits, Mademoiselle Crestbourne is right. The seekerthing is a legend. Even if it exists, nobody outside of the Grand Council has ever seen it. Hence its name, seekerthing. Those who believe it exists believe that only someone as strong and powerful as the threads of power themselves would be able to sense and find it. All the rest of us know is that the seekerthing would, in the wrong hands, be a very dangerous device. If you could only begin to imagine the damage it could cause if wielded by someone like—”

“The Master of All,” finished Cas, the words slipping out before he could stop himself.

Madame Aster’s expression turned furious again. “I will not have that abhorrent monster mentioned in my class.”

The room fell utterly and fearfully silent.

Outside, the bells chimed, and everyone exhaled in relief as they began to pack up their things. But Cas sat there for a moment, thoughts and theories running through his brain at a million miles a minute.

The seekerthing.

He might’ve just discovered what the Master of All was looking for after all.

Over the next few weeks, Cas spent every waking moment trawling through every book in the library that might give him any indication what the seekerthing was.

The Abnormies were happy to help, and whilst Cas couldn’t skip classes to do this, he could neglect his homework. As time went on, he found himself increasingly relying on the fact that he was the Foretold to give him a free pass for the upcoming end-of-year exams.

Unfortunately, there was no mention of the seeker-thing anywhere.

Madame Aster was right. Mentions of the conduits were scattered here and there – in the same way one may know that nuclear codes or the secret service exists, but not what or where they are – but the seekerthing remained a phantom. There were no educated guesses about it in books by renowned threadologists. No hints in history books containing old Grand Council texts. Not even wild speculations by self-published crackpots.

When the dewy freshness of spring fully set in, even the Abnormies’ interest in the seekerthing waned – and Warrior had long since grown bored of tossing paper balls across the library for Hobdogglin to chase.

On the first day of April, the Abnormies had finally had enough.

Secretly, Cas had too.

He spent his lunch break dejectedly doing his second-favourite activity these days: sitting in the far corner of the library, peeking behind the re-hung tapestry and studying the Abominable Archives’ lock.

It didn’t seem to open using a normal key. Quite the opposite – it looked like you had to insert some sort of cog into a space in the door.

Cas was just about to call Fenix over for the umpteenth time, knowing he loved everything mechanical and tinkering, when Fenix, Paws and Warrior ambled over, swinging a picnic basket brimming with scrummy delights.

“That’s enough,” said Warrior, yanking Cas to his feet. “It’s a beautiful day, the sun is finally shining and you’re coming outside with us.”

Cas supposed he should be grateful that Warrior seemed to have snapped out of her mood. At worst these days, she was occasionally off with him – a funny, distant feeling Cas couldn’t quite put his finger on – but it had been so long since their Scuffle with the Du Villaines that he thought she must have got over their disagreement by now.

He sighed and started towards the shelves. “Fine. Let me just pick up—”

“No books,” said Warrior firmly.

Paws and Fenix shot Cas an unsympathetic look.

“You’re reading a lot, Cas, even for, erm, me,” said Fenix.

Cas went to slump back down to the floor. “Well, I need to do something,” he said, irritated. “I can’t just sit here doing nothing. Not when the Master of All is out there and I still don’t know what he wants.”

Since security at the school had been tightened, the Master hadn’t attempted another break-in – at least, not that anybody knew. Even so, Cas couldn’t sit idly by. The answer about what the Master wanted felt so close, but also just out of reach.

“Today you can,” ordered Warrior, heaving him up. “It’s Paws’s birthday. She’s throwing a surprise picnic party by the lake.”

“Surprise!” Paws sang from her wheelchair, razzle-dazzling her hands.

Cas glanced at her sceptically. “Aren’t we supposed to be throwing you one of those?”

Warrior rolled her eyes. “Not in the Balance Lands. Here, the person whose birthday it is does the unexpected party-throwing.”

Fenix nodded. “The birthday boy or girl can decide to throw their party at any time. Hours, days or months after their birthday.”

“That’s what makes it a surprise, you see,” said Paws.

“Surely I can miss one—”

“No,” Warrior interrupted him. “I’m throwing my party today too. Surprise.” The last word was as deadpan as a flat pancake.

“When was your birthday?”

“New Year’s Day. Now, get a move on or else all the good spots by the lake will be taken.”

When they wandered outside, it became clear that many other Wayward School students had also ventured out to enjoy the fresh air.

As Fenix and Paws tailed along behind them, Warrior frog-marched Cas down to the boating lake. But as they reached the water’s edge, Lucille Du Villaine appeared from behind a tree and blocked their path.

She was alone.

“Hi, Cas,” she said, smiling unsettlingly pleasantly. “Can I have a quick word?”

Warrior looked the silvery girl up and down. “I don’t trust you to keep him in one piece.”

Lucille’s bright demeanour faded and she slipped back into her old, cold self. “Look, Riff-Raff,” she barked. “I just want to talk to him. You can watch us from over there if you like.”

Cas waved Warrior and the others on.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

“But, Cas—”

“Look, I’ll scream if I’m in trouble, OK?”

After making a gesture that told Lucille she would put her foot somewhere extremely uncomfortable if anything happened to Cas, Warrior, Paws and Fenix walked over to another spot by the lake, worriedly looking back at him every other step.

“Where are your minions?” said Cas, glancing around.

Sam Du Villaine was nowhere to be seen.

Lucille twirled the hem of her grey Airscaper cloak uneasily around her finger. “Sam doesn’t know that I’m here,” she said quietly, as if she was afraid her brother might hear. “I just… I just wanted to…”

“What?” said Cas, already very bored. “Threaten me? Belittle me? Call me another stupid, horrible name?”

Lucille looked mortally offended. “Thank you,” she murmured, the words sounding alien as they left her lips. “I wanted to thank you. You didn’t tell anyone about me. About what you saw that night.”

Cas groaned, exasperated. “I told you I wouldn’t. There’s nothing—”

Lucille held up her hand.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Cas concluded anyway.

She blushed. Cas couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lucille Du Villaine was actually flushing pink.

“Well, still, keep it to yourself,” she said stiffly. Then realizing that might have sounded harsh, she added hastily, “Please. I’m not ready for people to know yet.”

Cas gave Lucille the once-over. She was really quite pretty when her personality wasn’t so ugly. Cas wanted to say something else, to comfort her in some way, but in the end he merely nodded.

He knew what it was to feel like a freak. An outsider.

And whilst he couldn’t help everyone knowing who and what he was, whilst he was trying to learn not to be afraid or ashamed of it, to take comfort in the knowledge that everyone had differences about them, he knew that some people weren’t ready to share theirs yet.

This was Lucille’s difference. Her secret. Her funny leg.

“I promise,” said Cas.

Lucille offered him an incredibly shaky smile.

“Oh,” she said, looking back at Cas as she strode away. “You can call me Lucie, by the way.”

A warm, fuzzy feeling settled in Cas’s gut. He carried the pleasant sensation all the way down to the lake, as he and the Abnormies hungrily dived into the basket full of treats and concoctions from Captain Caeli’s Cakery.

Fenix told them that he had brought Steve, their Order Studies class’s yellow-and-black-speckled salamander, outside for a change of scenery. It was his turn to look after the creature as part of their studies on Elementies, and he was keen to show off a new fireproof lock he had created. But when Fenix went to pull the salamander out of his bag, his face greyed and he dropped the creature’s empty cage as if it had scorched him.

“Er, Fenix,” said Cas slowly. “Did you accidentally leave Steve running riot in the Attic?”

Panicked, Fenix started riffling through his bag. But Steve the Salamander was gone.

Only a mangled metal lock, still dripping molten at the end, remained.

“It’s all my fault,” said Fenix despairingly, burying his head in his hands. “I shouldn’t have tinkered with the padlock. How am I going to tell Madame Aster?”

“Don’t worry,” said Paws, patting Fenix’s back. “We’ll find Steve. He can’t have gone far. I’ll jump into Mogget and have a look around—”

The scabby cat around her neck yowled in disagreement.

“That’s if the mangy mog didn’t eat him,” quipped Warrior unhelpfully.

Paws shot her an uncharacteristically sharp look. “That’s not funny. How do you know it wasn’t Hobdogglin?”

Hobdogglin appeared out of nowhere at Warrior’s side. “Did you eat the stinky salamander?” Warrior asked him. Hobdogglin shook his abnormally small head. “See.”

They all split up and started looking for Steve.

Just as the clock bells tolled to signal the end of break, Cas spied something near the shore.

“I’ve found him!” he cried out to the others, pointing to where a lizard-shaped yellow-and-black spot was perched atop Puggle the Nuggle. The Wavebreaker Elementie was wading in the shallows, munching on grass.

To Cas’s surprise, the Abnormies’ faces filled with dread.

“What?” said Cas. “I’ll go and get him.”

“You can’t,” said Paws.

“Why not?”

She furrowed her brow, clearly trying to read Puggle the Nuggle’s mind. “Puggle is … up to something.”

“Plus, there’s rule 306 in the Wayward School handbook,” said Warrior. “Do not touch or ride on the Nuggle. It comes after rule 305: Don’t feed the Nuggle and before rule 307: On pain of death, do not attempt to cuddle the Nuggle.”

Cas shot her a dubious look. “Wayward has more than three hundred rules?”

“Actually, more than five hundred,” Fenix informed him. “They, er, have to with so many powerful Others around.”

“I should know,” grumbled Warrior. “Madame Aster made me copy them all out in detention once.”

“It goes all the way from rule 1: Don’t run in the corridors to rule 506: Don’t put salamanders down people’s pants.”

Paws nodded enthusiastically. “Poor Mrs Crane was treating trouser burns daily before that one was introduced.”

“Well, some people deserved it,” huffed Warrior, suggesting she might have had something to do with the rule being drafted.

Cas waved dismissively. “I’m not going to ride Puggle,” he said, ignoring their warnings and striding confidently up to the watery beast. “I’m just going to grab Steve off his withers – see, come here, little fella – WOAH!”

Unexpectedly, Cas felt a massive nip on his buttocks followed by a strong, rough bump. He was thrown into the air and grabbed hold of the only thing he could: the Nuggle’s seaweedy mane. Steve the Salamander jumped off Puggle’s back into Fenix’s waiting hands as the Nuggle gave Cas another mighty shove with his muzzle, boosting him up onto his back.

Before Cas could say or do anything, Puggle reared and took off at a gallop.

“CAS!” the Abnormies hollered from the shore.

But their voices were drowned out by the sound of wind rushing past Cas’s ears. Puggle the Nuggle bolted for several strides, before leaping into the air in a graceful arc and diving into the lake. Down and down he plunged into the icy depths, with Cas holding on for dear life. Water rushed past, plastering Cas’s wet clothes to his body as they surged deeper still…

Panic rippled through Cas.

He couldn’t breathe. His eyes stung and his lungs burned for air, until…

FLASH.

Puggle the Nuggle broke through the water’s surface into a stinky, grimy pipe. Cas had just enough time to gulp in a mouthful of fresh air and realize that they had waygated into what appeared to be the sewers, before they were galloping again towards a bright light at the end of the tube. A thrilling wave of cold, familiar magic pulsed through him – they must be beneath the Deathmaker mausoleums. Then Puggle dived out of the end of the pipe and they plummeted towards another body of water below.

As soon as they crashed through the waves, Cas knew they hadn’t returned to the lake. There was no flash of a waygate, and the watery landscape had changed. The waves tasted disgustingly salty. Schools of silvery fish swam by, twinkling like tin-foil-wrapped stars as they meandered through what looked like a gigantic underwater cityscape submerged by the sea. Gone were the algae-covered rocks of the lake; in their place were jutting obsidian boulders stacked so closely that they resembled towers and turrets. The fin of a great white shark loomed dangerously in the distance, and beyond that there was only vast, open ocean.

Cas’s eyes stung as Puggle the Nuggle paddled on, oblivious to the fact Cas was drowning. His chest was on fire, his head was screaming and light spots were speckling the edges of his vision.

He had to do something…

Struggling to remain conscious, Cas slumped forward. He was only secured by being knotted in the Nuggle’s seaweedy mane. All he could see was Puggle’s dark bay body. But that was all he needed. With every ounce of effort left in him, Cas imagined taking control of the Nuggle’s legs and commanding them to swim up. He imagined the creature’s muscles moving to the whim of his magic … paddling them to safety. The light in Cas’s world began to grow dim…

FLASH.

Just in the nick of time, Cas and Puggle soared through the lake’s surface, before the Nuggle unceremoniously bucked Cas off onto the bank.

He hit the ground with a thud, spluttering up water as his friends rallied around him.

“Casander!”

“Cas, can you breathe?”

“Are you all right? Where have you been?”

“Sea…” Cas coughed, drawing in enough air to get the words out before choking on the water he had swallowed again. “I didn’t know … Wayward had a sea…”

The Abnormies regarded him, puzzled.

“Well, it doesn’t really,” said Warrior. “Only a deserted sliver of one. But nobody goes there. We call it the Wide West of Wayward.”

“It’s on the edge of town,” added Paws. “We use it to get rid of rubbish mostly because the tide draws it out. There’s no beach, just cliffs. No one even goes swimming there; there’s the risk you might swim out beyond the wards and not return before Wayward moves again.”

“Or you could, um, go from swimming in deep water to a sudden, bone-shattering drop onto dry ground,” said Fenix, “depending on where Wayward shows up. Hardly any wardsmen monitor there, because, you know, you’d have to somehow get past the wards, the sea and the sharks if you wanted to sneak in.”

Cas blinked up at them through stinging eyes, incredulous. “And I’m only hearing about this now? You know we’ve been looking for how the Master—”

But a lilted voice cut him off.

“Monsieur Darkbloom,” Madame Aster cawed, her shadow blocking out the sun as she suddenly loomed over Cas, hands on her hips and scowling. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“The Nuggle… I…” Cas tried to say, too faint and weak to properly explain.

Madame Aster didn’t care. “Headmaster Higgles’s office,” she commanded, prodding her finger furiously towards the school. “NOW!”