Harris Institute for Gifted Students by Pineapple | Content warnings
Sofia could hear the clash of magic in the room as she tried unsuccessfully to pick the lock in front of her. It was easier with Samuel’s electricity pulsing around her, supercharging her. It felt like if she could focus hard enough, she would actually be able to see through the door, into the mechanism. Things were moving faster with the boost but that meant Alaric was more aggressive and that meant Sofia’s mind was distracted as she worried what the sounds behind her meant.
Samuel’s magic was certainly more stable with a wand. Normally, it was nebulous, vague. But now, it was shining like a light bulb. Maybe even as bright as one of the starts Alaric had summoned earlier. When Sam sliced through the air to cast a spell or to defend himself, the path he carved left a sparkling afterglow. Sofia had only seen it in meteor trains or shooting stars, not something so close, never like this.
It was supernatural. Sofia could move things with her mind, she could unlock this lock without touching it but that’s because it was tangible. It was reality.
But Sam… his power was beyond anything she understood. It didn’t make sense that this little boy in front of her was given these powers to call on forgotten names and ancient powers. Glancing over her shoulder to check on him, Sofia could see him wielding his wand with purpose.
The lights flickered as they fought, sometimes shifting through a spectrum of colors until it landed on darkness as Alaric borrowed their powers. Spells clashed in explosive battles of pink, orange, blue—several happening all at once across the room and Sofia wasn’t sure who was winning. Damage here didn’t look like it did when fighting Evil Ones; Samuel winced, every once in a while, flinching away from a particularly bright flash or something too close. His hands shook with the energy it was taking to cast and iridescent runes were beginning to crawl up his arms. Samuel was using water, fire, earth, dark and light magic, whatever he could to attack Alaric but Alaric was of The Light. It revealed and it burned the same way that it made people feel safe. It was fast—faster than sound—it could bend, it could break, it could heal, it could kill. How was Samuel supposed to defeat that?
There was a squawk—a flutter of wings—as Alaric’s familiar flew through the room.
Samuel didn’t let himself get distracted by the large, white owl that swooped close and then out of the room. Samuel took his chance, sending a dark, sparking shard of magic into Alaric’s shoulder.
Alaric wasn’t phased. The blade sunk into the arm he held his staff in, but he held on tightly. He turned to the hallway just in time, catching a golden arrow with his free hand.
Samuel tore his gaze away from Alaric. He quickly cast a spell to catch the bird in a bubble, catching sight of his friends arriving in the doorway. “What are you doing?” Samuel yelled, glaring at them.
Mickey’s hands were falling from her archery position. Vanessa was next to her, trying to assess the situation. The twins and Marjani were behind them, holding onto the captive Elliot Brady.
The arrow faded. The weapon Samuel had attacked with dislodged itself and floated near Alaric. His wound glowed.
“Shit,” Samuel muttered under his breath. He raised both hands quickly, beginning a spell. His eyes flicking back and forth between his opponent and his allies.
The smell of ozone hit them before anything else.
Samuel panicked. “Don’t!” he shouted, his hands still, but his head turning frantically towards Vanessa.
She threw a wicked curve ball, erratic in a way that would have thrown anybody else off. But it disappeared before it got halfway across the room to Alaric. It split into seven, circling Alaric like a halo before facing Samuel.
Samuel swirled, covering himself with a shield of dark, reflective water.
The lights flickered again and then extinguished in the room and for just a second, it was pitch black. It felt again like they were in the void of space. Like Alaric had sucked all the light out of the room and taken it for himself. All she could see was the seven colors he’d split Vanessa’s magic into circling, circling the dark shard Samuel had made. Sofia shut her eyes.
She heard the rush of wind, the zooming of the cosmos.
“Omelas,” Samuel said, like he was casting a spell.
Sofia forced her eyes open and turned her head to look over her shoulder. Ben was behind her, shielding her body with his own, just in case the barrier gave out. He had his hand up, looking across the room at the others. At Marjani. He’d set another barrier across the room, in the doorway.
As the light came back into the room, Sofia saw that it was not Samuel standing in front of Alaric, but Greyson. The colors were gone and so was the sharp, blade-like darkness. Pieces of it all lay between Greyson and Alaric, evaporating slowly as it rejoined its natural source.
“When did he…?” Sofia started.
“I’m sorry,” Samuel said. He stood up, his back to Greyson. His head fit right in the crook of Greyson’s neck when he leaned back, exhausted. “I wanted to avoid it.”
“We both knew you wouldn’t be able to,” Greyson countered with ease. He was glaring at Alaric with the ferocity that Samuel had at the beginning of the battle, the same look in his eyes.
“Can you feel it?” Samuel asked.
Greyson nodded. “Yeah.”
Alaric looked over the two of them, almost circling them as he paced from side to side. The puncture in his arm was nearly gone from power he’d absorbed from Mickey and Vanessa. “This is what you chose?”
“Remember how I said you should be proud of me?” Samuel said with a wry laugh.
“This is an abomination,” Alaric said. “You can’t take his freedom like this—you can’t make a human being a familiar!”
Samuel raised his wand. Greyson raised his hands.
“You can’t control a human’s power; it’s too dangerous,” Alaric continued. “You balk at tradition and yet you use it’s precedents only so you can attempt to skip the years it takes to become a great sorcerer?”
Samuel closed his eyes. “I told you I had no interest in becoming a great,” he said. Alaric started firing stars at the duo. Greyson’s hands moved to break them apart before they reached them, calmer and more in control than Sofia had ever seen him. He looked comfortable in his own skin, with himself, and the power he could wield. Rather than the spells clashing like when Alaric and Samuel had been fighting, the stars were quickly being broken apart into black holes. Samuel’s hands moved, twitching along with Greyson’s—it was impossible to tell who was the puppet and who was the puppeteer. But Samuel continued, “I knew I wouldn’t be able to beat you on my own. I’m borrowing this guy’s power.”
“You made a lifetime’s commitment for one battle?” Alaric scoffed.
Samuel’s eyes opened slowly. “Somebody had to stop you,” he said.
Sofia’s heart fell to her stomach. The intimacy that Ray had mentioned was this? When Samuel said he was willing to do his best, he meant this? He meant no going back?
The sound of the lock clicking open stretched across time, across the room.
Sofia felt everybody’s eyes on her. The air stilled as everybody tried to understand what was happening, what they should be doing, what their next move would be. It was Greyson who moved first. He stomped his foot, breaking apart the floor, sending an additional shield of stone and earth to block anything Alaric may try to keep the door from opening.
Samuel kicked himself into gear. He spun around, standing next to Greyson instead of behind him. “Ben, cover everyone as they cross the room. You all need to get out of here. Alaric will use the light from your powers again if you try anything.”
“But I don’t—” Sumire started to say.
“Greyson and I will handle this,” Samuel said. His hands were already moving, his wand cutting precisely through the air, pulling every black hole Greyson had created together. “Get out if you don’t want to be collateral damage.”
Sugi grabbed Sumire’s hand and tugged her across the room. The others followed. Any attempt that Alaric made to stop them was stopped by Samuel’s magic or Greyson’s powers.
Sofia started pulling the door open. It was heavy, but she’d trained for this. Moving things with her telekinesis was easy now, especially since she could see it. She watched as everyone filed through as soon as the gap widened. She heard Alaric’s mounting frustration, the way his spells were starting to sizzle and spark through the air. The room was growing darker and darker as time passed.
“Sofia, come on!” Vanessa urged, passing through the doorway. She’d urged everyone else through before herself—the last one except Sofia and Greyson and Samuel.
The room was growing unpredictably windy and debris was being blasted through the room by misfires and near-misses. Samuel deflected white-hot ball of magic into the wall Greyson had built up for them, sending bits of it into what remained of Ben’s barrier.
“Sof!” Ben yelled from the other side of the threshold.
Sofia slipped through the door and started pulling it closed after her. With the pile of earth gone, she could see the boys and Alaric. There was a huge black hole in front of Greyson and Samuel, absorbing everything close to it, absorbing even the light.
A chunk of loose rock shut the door before Sofia could finish, before she could see what would happen to her friends.
“Benjamin, let the barriers down now,” Marjani said, her voice snapping Sofia out of her reverie. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
Ben nodded, his magic fading from them all like a sigh. “Are you all okay? How’d it go with Mr. Brady?”
“He’s harmless if he can’t move,” Sugi said. “I don’t think he really wants to do this.”
“And yet he did,” Sumire said, crossing her arms.
Ben made a face at that, but before he could say anything about it, Vanessa was examining their new surroundings. Underground, by the looks of it. Much more like Alaric’s tower than the rest of the building had been. It might be sound-proof, since nobody had heard their fighting or Sahar before any of this, but that might have been the barrier from beforehand, as well, Sofia mused.
“What’s that sound?” Vanessa asked.
“It sounds like… weird chanting,” Mickey said. “It’s so echo-y. It’s hard to tell where it’s coming from.”
Sofia jerked with realization. “You hear it, too?”
Everyone turned to stare blankly at her.
Vanessa was the first one to understand. “That’s Sahar? That’s what you’ve been hearing this whole time?”
Sofia nodded stiffly. Sahar was here. Maybe just a hallway away. It was dark down here, but there was a pearlescent light shimmering across the rocky material of the walls. It was shifting, moving, and Sofia couldn’t pin down the exact color if she tried. There was some kind of magic at play, if they hadn’t heard him until now. He was definitely here, not just in her head.
“Did somebody come down here?” a voice asked.
“We’re here,” Sofia answered out loud. She heard her own voice echo back.
“If you want to prove that you really had nothing to do with this, help us with the layout here,” Vanessa hissed at Mr. Elliot. “Where are we going?”
Mr. Elliot had been quiet the whole time Sofia had seen him. Marjani and Sugi were taking turns tugging him along, but he was complacent as he followed them, his hands bound behind him with Sugi’s magic. “I haven’t been down here,” he said softly. “It was a secret even from me.”
Marjani huffed a haughty sigh. “You’re very skilled, Mr. Brady,” she said, “you aren’t a professor here for nothing. Could you not figure out a simple underground tunnel through use of its materials?”
“If I had use of my hands I could,” he agreed simply. “I wouldn’t recommend untying me in your position.”
“Are you gonna split us up again?” Benjamin spun around to look at him in surprise.
“No.” Mr. Elliot shrugged as much as he was able. “But as a teacher, I wouldn’t advise trusting a potential enemy.”
“Just slam him into the anti-magic door already and be done with it,” Sumire said.
Mr. Elliot nodded in assent.
“With all due respect,” Mickey began, reaching over. Mr. Elliot winced.
“Mickey!” Sumire gasped.
“–we need your help,” she finished, tugging enough that the ropes came undone. They vanished, falling apart as they were untied. “I don’t think you’re as evil as you’re making yourself out to be. You’ve been kind to Greyson since year one. Why stop now?”
Mr. Elliot rubbed at his wrists where the restraints had chaffed. He frowned. “Do you all even understand the scale of what you’re getting into?”
“Does it matter?” Mickey asked back. “You know what Alaric is doing is wrong.”
“What he’s doing is… legendary.” There was disgust, mixed in with the reverence in Mr. Elliot’s voice.
“At the cost of a life?” Ben cut in.
Mr. Elliot shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to be forever,” he said. “Only until he found a… solution.”
“Walk away.” Sahar’s voice floated into Sofia’s head. “While you still can.”
She craned her head to listen for him, but he said nothing else.
Mr. Elliot slapped his hand onto a wall. A strip of his runes shot down the hallway, neat and organized, like they were always meant to be there. An insert tile in the dark stone of Alaric’s hidden basement.
There was a collective intake of breath, waiting to see if this was a trap.
“There’s a hidden room,” Mr. Elliot reported. There was the familiar sound of scraping, moving material. He started walking towards it, following the path his magic set, his hand tracing them as they walked down the hall. They lit up underneath his fingers, tracing him back.
The bricks were rearranging themselves into an arc over a door when they came upon it.
“Walk away,” Sahar reminded her beneath the glossolalia.
“Thank you,” Mickey sighed out. She reached forward and knocked on the door before turning the doorknob and entering.
JAAM Writing 