Harris Institute for Gifted Students Episode 14: Doorways

Harris Institute for Gifted Students by Pineapple | Content warnings

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Sumire nearly punched the butterfly. It flew too close to her as she was fighting one-on-one with an Evil One, and she almost swatted the bug out of her face. Mickey shot the enemy while Sumire was distracted.

“Sumi!” she shouted, half aggravated and half worried. “Be careful!”

But Sumire hadn’t heard the reprimand. Her focus had shifted from the endless slick and shiny skin of the monsters to the bright burst of color fluttering around her. Red with accents of black—matching her.

Sumire stole a quick glance around the hallway. Vanessa pitched a loud, unpredictable burst ball at the remaining targets and the nervous, vibrating air of battle began to settle. Sumire held her hand out to the large insect, and it landed gently on her fingertips.

It was familiar. She knew at once that it had something to do with her brother. Once she felt this recognition, the butterfly took off flying again. “Wait!” Sumire shouted after it. She didn’t even look back at her friends before she started following the bug.

“Sumire!” Mickey yelled.

“Hey! What are you doing?” When Sumire didn’t answer, Vanessa tried again. “Where are you going?”

“My brother!” Sumire answered. Her voice echoed down the hallway, and it wasn’t long before Sumire heard Vanessa and Mickey following her. She rounded a few corners, never losing sight of the butterfly.

It disappeared through a doorway. Sumire slid to a stop in front of it.

Sugi was inside the room, his hand outstretched to welcome the little thing. It fluttered into his open palm and dissipated into little pink orbs of light, fading until they were gone. Sugi blinked, refocusing, until he looked at Sumire and smiled.

Elliot was behind Sugi, tied in what looked like a magic chain. Marjani was tying the ends behind his back, holding him in place without much trouble, and making sure Elliot’s hands were secured.

“You did this by yourself?” Sumire asked, looking between them in wonder.

Sugi shrugged. “Marjani helped,” he said. “I’m glad you found us. I was worried about you and the others.”

Sumire took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Worried, he said. As if he had anything to worry about when his magic was even more limitless than she’d thought. When he’d been pushed into doing something he’d never even wanted to dream of doing.

When Sumire couldn’t cool down, she stalked into the room and punched Elliot hard in the face just as Mickey and Vanessa caught up.

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This time, when the Evil Ones were destroyed, they didn’t get back up again. Except for their own laborious breathing, there were no sounds. No scraping of materials shifting, no moving walls. The floors didn’t start zipping them across the building, taking them away from their goal. Without obstruction, Sahar’s voice was louder and clearer than ever.

In her peripheral vision, Sofia saw Samuel crane his head in the same way she did. He couldn’t hear thoughts the way she could, but he must have felt some sort of magic coming from the same direction.

“Do you think they took care of Mr. Brady, or do you think that this is a trap?” Ben asked.

Samuel threw a quick glance behind him, and then one at Greyson. “If it were a trap, we’d be stuck going forward,” Samuel said, his voice steady. “The way is open. I think someone found him and incapacitated him somehow. Whether Alaric expects us or not is a different question, and one that I can’t answer.”

Ben wanted to look back. He wanted to wait, to check and see if Marjani was okay. Sofia could hear it almost as if he was telling her about it: how mad Marjani would be, how she’d tell him that’s not what a leader should do, how this was why he still needed training. Ben steeled himself and looked back anyway, eyes searching the empty hallway, eventually landing on his companions. “You guys ready?” he asked.

Samuel and Sofia nodded, so Ben put up his barriers and led them around unchanging corners and, eventually, into the room they’d been trying to reach.

Samuel ran his hands over the walls as they walked through it. “The makeup is different here,” he commented. “Elliot’s magic doesn’t seem to be mixed in with Alaric’s, but he reinforced it.”

“We’re close,” Sofia said. She could hear, underneath the glossolalia, some of Sahar’s voice—his voice in English, his real voice. Sofia wondered if she had the same powers as Ray if she would be able to understand the new language from this distance, with the help from Vanessa’s boost, or if she’d be able to speak to the Sahar underneath the influence of whatever it was that was controlling him. She could feel his manic energy, feel how alone he was, jumping around like a trapped grasshopper. It was hard to pin down, but he was definitely nearby. “Maybe… in the next room…”

Ben passed everyone to tug on a door across the small room. It thudded against the doorjamb, heavy and solid. “It’s locked.”

“Watch out,” Greyson said, raising his hands. His brow furrowed, his hands shaking as he tried to take it apart.

Samuel looked at him and then at the door. He looked back at Greyson, who was taking a few laborious steps forward.

“Why—” Greyson started through gritted teeth.

“It’s enchanted,” Samuel said. “It’s not just heavy. It’s anti-magic.”

Greyson dropped his hands to his side with a heavy sigh. “You couldn’t have said earlier?”

Samuel shrugged. He walked over to the door, and Greyson and Sofia crowded around him to see. “I wasn’t sure,” Samuel said. “But Ben didn’t say anything either.”

Greyson looked accusingly at Ben. “You knew?”

Ben clenched and unclenched his hand. “Not… until I grabbed it,” he confessed. “I had a barrier on, just in case. It shocked me when I grabbed the handle. I think it killed the boost Nessie gave me.”

“Wait, what?” Sofia almost shouted. “That means your own magic won’t protect you!”

“Yeah, but a magician wouldn’t use anti-magic unless he was trying to keep something really secret,” Ben said.

“Or keep something inside,” Samuel muttered. He chewed on his lip as he looked at the door like it was a puzzle to solve. “I think it would have been worse if you didn’t have the barrier at all.”

“Small blessings, huh.”

“Sofia, your powers are metaphysical and not supernatural, right?”

She swiveled her head to look at Sam.

“Ohh,” Ben was nodding. “I get it. Good thinking, Genius.”

“What?” she asked. “What do you want me to do?”

“Use your telekinesis to undo the lock,” he said. “If you can unlock and open it without touching it, we can avoid the anti-magic enchantments and get through, but—” he stopped as a wind started to pick up, swirling around the room.

The room felt like a lung, growing and expanding as the new air filled it. The walls pushed away from each other, making more space than should have been possible. Ben put his arms around Sofia protectively as they all spun to look at the eye of the tornado forming the middle of the room. Samuel bared his teeth as Alaric of the Light’s form appeared as the whirlwind died down.

The old man looked somewhat proud, smirking as he looked at Samuel. “A very clever workaround, Samuel, but it will take time,” he said, his voice bouncing off the walls. “I won’t allow your team to take it.”

“Try and stop us,” Samuel growled, his voice vicious in a way Sofia never could have imagined.

Sparks erupted from the end of Alaric’s staff like fireworks. A mix of pink and yellow and blue. Alaric sent the spell straight at Samuel.

Samuel gestured quickly with his right hand, capturing the magic in a bubble until it fizzled out, harmless. His left hand was stretched forward, summoning a portal. Scrolls with unfamiliar runes brushed onto them were coming from it, glowing faintly golden. They wrapped around Alaric’s staff, trying to wrestle it from his hands.

The paper lit on fire and Samuel quickly abandoned it. He used both hands to break one of the walls, throwing bricks at Alaric a few at a time. Alaric whacked them away with a swing of his staff, not even touching them. They blasted back into the wall behind him like bugs on a windshield. “Your magic is inconsistent without the books to rely on,” he scolded, like they were in the classroom. “You think you could stand a chance against me?”

As Alaric lectured him, Samuel spun once to stir up the air around him. It continued after he stopped, picking up speed and strength, dropping quickly in temperature as it headed towards Alaric, ripping apart and freezing the floor beneath it.

Alaric retaliated with a flurry of fireballs.

Samuel raised his hands to block them. Sofia barely saw a wave of water appear in front of him, just in time.

Steam filled the room, clouding their vision of both the magicians.

“Greyson,” Ben said, his voice low and demanding, “why aren’t you helping him?”

Greyson looked at him. His fists were balled tight at his sides, but his feet were stuck to the ground. “Why aren’t you working on the door?” he countered. It didn’t do much to alleviate the guilt in his voice.

Shit, Sofia thought. Greyson was right, whatever it was he was hiding. Samuel was fighting for his life, buying them time, and she was just gawking when she had a job to do. She closed her eyes and started feeling around for the lock with her telekinesis. She’d done it before with Ms. Fatima as practice, but nothing this complicated… or heavy.

Box. Twist. Trace. Pyramid. Go.

Sofia grit her teeth with the effort of trying to find the right notches. It wasn’t big enough. Try again. Box. Flat. Flat. Helicopter. Okay, now fingers—

She was so engrossed, so focused, she almost didn’t hear Alaric. He was murmuring, his voice blending with the droning of Sahar’s voice. There was so much noise, but Ben’s voice cut through the background noise.

“Grey,” he said, voice edging on nervous.

“I can’t—”

Sofia broke out of her trance. When she opened her eyes, the room was swirling darkness, dotted with white hot stars glowing, growing in mass and power, all of it directed at them. The cloudy air was clearing still, but Alaric’s light was bright and foreboding.

Ben’s pink barrier’s shielded Sofia, warm like a hug. It glowed around Greyson, too, just barely luminescent compared to Alaric’s magic.

Sofia pushed herself in front of Ben, not even large enough to cover all of him. It would protect her from whatever spell Alaric was casting now, though, and Ben’s barriers wouldn’t protect himself. Greyson finally moved, wrapping arms around Sofia and Ben as well.

There was a familiar crack, a bright flash of light that Sofia shut her eyes against.

“Your fight is with me,” Samuel’s voice rang out.

When she opened her eyes, the room was light again, clear of the steamy air and the darkness, and there was a large barrier around the three of them.

“You…” Alaric started. He laughed mirthlessly. “I knew there was something different about you.”

Samuel waved his arms, quick and precise. A bolt of lightning bounced around in the barrier. Sofia flinched at it, but it was harmless. She felt it creep between the hairs on her arms, up her spine, refreshing the boost that Vanessa had given her. The pink of Ben’s magic grew brighter around them. He would be safe now, with his own barriers.

Sofia took a moment to examine Samuel as he took a few steps toward Alaric. In his left hand, he was holding what looked like a conductor’s baton.

“That’s not the wand I gave you,” Alaric said with a touch of wonder in his voice. “Where did you get it?”

“I carved this one myself,” Sam said.

“Typical,” he spat. “You’ve no respect for the artifacts others might offer you.”

“You mean that ugly thing you gave me before?” Sam smirked. “I nearly broke that one to use it’s power, but Ms. Ximenez actually offered me lightning in a bottle to charge this one.”

Alaric’s face hardened.

Samuel raised his hands. “You should be happy,” he taunted. “I’m finally taking your advice.”