Harris Institute for Gifted Students by Pineapple | Content warnings
“Sahar!” Mickey shouted. She was through the door and at his side before anybody could try to tell her to be careful. She slid on her knees the last few feet to him, hands hovering around him, afraid to touch.
It was strange seeing Sahar and not just hearing him. He was stirring something in the cauldron in front of him, looking at it with dark, unfocused eyes. His hair was dark and thick, some parts curly and others wavy, tangled and flying everywhere from the power of whatever it was he was working on. It was the contents of the container, the ever-changing elements, those transformations that were giving off the glow Sofia had seen before. Each transmutation yielded a new hue of pearlescent light, reflecting against his skin and hair, making him look ashen and grey. Unnerving. Like he was part of the magic itself. Perfect and inhuman. Even the way he moved the wand in the pot was metered and rhythmic.
“Wait, Mickey—” Mr. Elliot started to say, but it was too late.
Mickey reached out and put a hand on Sahar’s shoulder to shake him to consciousness. Soon she had the same blank, far-off expression as Sahar did. Something not quite there.
“Mickey?” Sumire’s voice was urgent, trying not to panic. “What happened?”
Sugi turned to look at Sofia. “Can you hear him any better here? Can you figure out what’s going on?”
Sofia shook her head. First of all, he was still mumbling in that incomprehensible language. Maybe it was ancient. Maybe Samuel would have recognized it, if he weren’t still fighting for his life and theirs upstairs. But Sahar’s voice was louder than ever and now double-toned because she could hear his mouth and his mind. Plus… there was everybody else, too. Everyone next to her, bursting with energy and anxiety. They were so close and still so far from succeeding. They’d left their friends behind and now Mickey was in some strange trance, too?
Vanessa slipped her hand into Sofia’s and tugged on it. She sent a shock that wasn’t quite physical through Sofia’s system. “Focus,” she said, her eyes serious, her voice soft. “We’re almost there.”
“I’m okay,” Sofia promised. “I’ll try, I just…”
Sofia felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked over to see Sugi. “I can help you,” he said. He closed his eyes and she felt his magic coil around her like a blanket. “There’s something… strange about him. I can’t figure it out. It might not be safe for you.”
It felt like Ben’s barriers, but mental. Sugi must have figured out something new again. There was another tug in her brain, something far off and familiar.
“We’re going in like an arrow,” Ray’s voice said to her. “Ready?”
Sofia’s free hand reached up to clutch at Sugi’s. Whether or not he knew Ray was there didn’t matter. Sugi was there for them, protecting them in a way nobody else could. She recoiled, feeling it physically when they tried to penetrate the aura coming off Sahar and Mickey.
“Walk away,” Sahar’s voice was saying, echoing. Growing louder, louder. Closer. More real until they were there. Sofia felt Sugi in one hand and Ray in her head but she couldn’t place where she was.
“Open your eyes,” Ray told her.
“They are open.”
Sugi’s hand twitched beneath hers.
“Nothing changed,” Sofia told Ray.
“Walk away while you still have time,” Sahar said again, but it sounded… tangible. It sounded like he was speaking out loud. And so did Ray, for that matter. But they couldn’t be, because Sahar was still speaking in tongues and Ray never left the safety of his room. Nobody else was reacting to them. Everything was the same even though it felt like Sofia was standing on sand in an hourglass. She was losing ground and she was losing time.
“Okay,” Ray said, as if he were right next to her, speaking into her ear from behind. Shivers ran down her back at the thought. “Okay then, close your eyes. Open your mental ones.”
“My mental ones?” She repeated back incredulously. She shut her eyes anyway.
“Like my butterfly,” Sugi said helpfully, but Sofia couldn’t tell if it was the Sugi physically next to her or the Sugi coating her telepathy. She focused on the feel of him close by, everywhere around her. She tried to listen. She tried to see.
“Walk away while you still have time, Sahar,” he told himself. He was pacing. He looked healthier here. Less skin and bones, more rich golden brown and stray movements. “It’s not worth it.”
“We’re deep in his mind,” Ray said. “Like subconscious levels.”
Ray was standing next to Sofia. She recognized that he was there with her, linked in the way they were because they were both telepaths. She was afraid if she stopped concentrating on Sahar, she’d lose him. So she kept her eyes trained on the repeating image of Sahar pacing, telling himself to walk away. “What do you mean?”
“He’s trying to show us something,” Ray said.
The scene in front of her dissolved, erased like pixels on a screen. One at a time. “I’m scared. I…” Sahar hesitated.
Alaric appeared. Lines coming together to create the image of him standing before Sahar like a judge. “You’re a talented alchemist, Sahar,” he said. “The magnum opus is a very admirable thing to pursue.”
“You don’t understand, sir,” he said. The timid shake in his voice was fading. “It doesn’t make sense that so many have tried and come so close only to fail. Something else must be wrong, something else must be happening…”
Alaric turned his full attention to Sahar now. “Like what?”
Ray brushed against Sofia’s shoulder—it felt like a guitar riff sounded, startling her away from the scribbled imaged cobbled together in front of her. “These are his memories,” Ray said. “He can’t full show us, but… I think it’s because of Sugi’s interference that we can even see this much.”
“You think there’s something trying to keep us out?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You don’t feel it?”
“I can feel them,” Sahar explained. “Everyone who’s ever done this before me. I can hear them. They’re there, helping me along. I’m so close.”
Alaric looked at him like he was crazy. There was a fear and intrigue in the way he stared at Sahar that Sahar missed the first time. He zoomed in, paused on it now like it was a home movie.
Fast forward.
Alaric was making that face a lot lately. Less fear. More and more intense, more and more engrossed in the idea of the philosopher’s stone. The more Sofia watched, the more the Sahar’s memories honed in on Alaric’s expressions and the more exaggerated they became. It was likely only thanks to Ray and Sugi that they were any semblance of viewable. “I’ll help you,” he offered. “Samuel and I will keep watch as you complete it.”
“I don’t think there is a completion,” Sahar said. “I don’t think it ends.”
The fuzzy black and white screen of an old CRT.
“I want to stop.”
More of the salt-and-pepper screen accompanied by the crashing sound of tinny electric waves.
“Walk away before it’s too late, Sahar,” he told himself. “Walk away while you still have time.”
He was pacing in the top-most level of Alaric’s tower, muttering to himself.
Alaric entered the room.
“I’ll write a thesis,” Sahar said. “I’ll write a paper. I’ll give lectures. But I can’t… It isn’t worth it to me.”
“Think of what we could gain from it,” Alaric said.
More static.
“Sofie?” Mickey called. She looked like a faint outline. Just a whisper of the idea that she was here, too.
“Mickey!”
“Don’t touch her,” Sugi warned. “She’s… more in tune with him. She might suck you in.”
“I can feel him,” Mickey said. “Sahar’s here, underneath the influence of the philosopher’s stone. He didn’t lose it all.”
“Lose what?” Sofia asked desperately.
In front of them was the fight Greyson told them about. The Evil Ones. The building coming down. And then black.
Then Sahar saw Alaric. It was always Alaric. All across history, there was always someone like him. Someone who wanted the philosopher’s stone. Someone who didn’t understand what would happen if they tried to complete it.
“I can’t do that to myself,” Sahar said. “I want to live.”
He knocked the cauldron over.
Static.
Stirring. Stirring. Stirringstirringstirring—
“Walk away.”
“—stop.”
“Sofia,” Ray said.
She felt Sugi tug at her shoulder. “It’s pushing us out,” he said, his voice tight.
“But Mickey?”
“Whatever’s left of him is protecting her,” Ray said. He was far away again, fading into the recesses of her mind.
“Sof?” Vanessa called, squeezing her hand. “Where’d you go?”
Sofia felt herself shaking. It took her a minute to catch her breath, to acclimate to where she was. “I don’t… I don’t know what…”
Mr. Elliot was looking at them with a furrowed brow. “It’s the act of creation, isn’t it?” he asked.
“What?”
“The act of creating is the magnum opus,” he said, like that made any more sense. He looked over at where Sahar was still stirring, with Mickey attached by a hand at the shoulder. “The purpose is the process. The philosopher’s stone isn’t an object, but an action.”
“Mr. Brady.” Marjani was taller than Mr. Elliot by at least a head. She looked imposing, even more so with the sharp look in her eye and the twist in her lip. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Sahar himself is the philosopher’s stone. He’s ascended from a human into something like a god,” he explained. “That’s why Alaric didn’t know how to handle him. He couldn’t present him like this.”
“That’s fine and dandy, but what do we do about it?” Ben asked. “We gotta get Mickey out of there. We have to save them.”
Mr. Elliot looked down at his watch. He clicked a few buttons on the side of it. “Stop him from creating,” he said. “If Hera were here… no, that would take too long…”
Vanessa bit her lip. Still holding tight onto Sofia’s hand, she and Ben made quick eye contact.
Ben nodded. “Boost me,” he said.
Vanessa slapped his hand, clasping their fingers together. They sparked like static in the dark.
“Hold on, you don’t know what will happen—” Elliot started to say, but his voice was soft. It fell on deaf, over-eager ears. They were so close, vibrating with excitement. Sofia could feel that Mr. Elliot’s protests were obligatory. He was on the same page, rooting for them as Marjani and Sumire started to glow pink.
“Don’t let me down, now,” Ben said.
Marjani and Sumire raced forward. Marjani punched the wand from Sahar’s hand, kicking the cauldron away from him, spilling the contents. Sumire snatched Mickey away from him, shielding her from the bubbling liquids of the philosopher’s stone and the light exploding from Sahar.
At first, Sahar looked as if he might attack Marjani. He reached out a hand for the wand across the room and then… the light was gone. The compounds cooled into mixed metals, hardening on the floor. Light came back to Sahar’s eyes. As he fell, Marjani caught him.
JAAM Writing 