The Academy [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

The eye stared at me. It couldn’t be an eye. It couldn’t be anything else. Jextor’s hand held my wrist so tightly my bones ached.

“Don’t let go,” I whispered.

The purple orb was so large I had to turn my head to see its boundary. I didn’t know why turning my head helped, because my eyes still didn’t see anything.

“Right,” Jextor said. “Time to put that thing in its place.”

I jerked my hand. The all-encompassing mold leaned against my chest, making my ribs creak. Don’t do anything stupid, I thought, as I couldn’t make a sound. A dry cough was all I could manage.

“Oh, it’s probably focusing on you? Makes sense,” Jextor said. I heard him scoff. “Nameless entity from beyond the grave!” he shouted suddenly. I jerked on my hand, trying to escape farther from the sound as his voice kept getting louder with every word. “I am Chancellor Bronte Jextor! You ignore me at your peril!”

Something like a lightning bolt ran through my body, flowing from his hand. The eye twitched, recoiling away. The black spot in the middle shifted imperceptibly.

“There we go. Gave it a poke,” he said, in a whisper. “Nameless entities usually respond well to bluster, you’ll see.”

That settled it. The man was completely insane. The weight of mold eased. The blue veins pulsed, angry and bright. I didn’t know where the entity was, maybe on the mountain, maybe where the Null existed. I could still feel its power pooling and growing. A rumble that crept nearer, that would suddenly turn into an avalanche crashing over us.

“Feels pretty scary when in here, doesn’t it?” Jextor asked in a low voice, talking near to my ear. “We want it to think we’re scared. Powerful and worth its effort, but intimidated by the terror it’s throwing our way.”

“I’m scared,” I said. The stench of mold had a sharp edge to it now, copper and ash and ice. The pressure behind it was building ever higher.

“That’s the spirit!” he said. “I think that’s enough, though.”

The world winked back. A wave of power, fresh and clear, rippled through me. Jextor stood next to me, a bead of sweat on his bald head. My legs ached. A purple haze bubbled and boiled around us, smelling of hate and rage. It pushed its way into my ears and mouth, and I gasped, breathing in a mouthful of mold.

“Well done,” Falar said. “Now we’ll see if it was well enough.” He had his hands stretched toward us, and threads of power shot out from his fingers. The mana built a sphere around us, translucent and pale blue against the purple rot. Through the sphere, the world looked clearer and air tasted fresher.

The runes of the ritual circle burned white. Grit was running to a set of runes where purple stains were starting to bruise them from the inside.

The stench of rot and mold trickled into my nose from afar. The eye had disappeared, but its gaze still lingered on me, feeling like a bruise all over my body.

YOU CAN NOT ESCAP—

“Shush,” Falar said, rotating his hands sharply.

The voice cut out mid-sentence. The sphere flared brighter blue, but it did nothing to the hate sitting just outside of it, hot enough that I felt it would blister my skin.

“You could hear it?” I asked.

Grit stood with her mouth open. Minnelil’s eyes were almost as wide as Grit’s. Fek had fallen on his butt, scrambling away from the ritual circle, heels kicking at the floor.

“We don’t need the distraction at the moment,” Falar said. “The lattice will filter out the part of its influence that our minds interpret as language. You’d do well to keep ignoring it even after this ritual.”

Jextor laughed and reached a hand out to the sphere. It flexed outward, fleeing from his fingers. “The thoughts of the undead are a curious thing. Is their hate truly hate or only our misguided approximation of what they truly feel? Interesting questions!”

“Yes, but for another time, Chancellor,” Falar said. “The thing strains against us. What learning we are going to do, we must do now.”

“Well, you heard him, girl,” Jextor said. “What can you say about it?”

“It?” I asked, leaning closer to the edge of the sphere. The purple haze wasn’t really there. I was starting to grasp what they were talking about. The entity wasn’t some especially evil skeleton that I could punch. There was an immaterial feeling to all of it, the haze, the mold, the eye. If its words were interpretation, could the rest be too?

Everything but the blue veins. They had felt real. I squinted into the purple and searched. The spiderweb of blue lines was still visible, still the same as before. Light flashed and travelled across the blue veins, like lightning kept striking inside them. I made note of the patterns, like Jextor had said. Branches, forks, tangles.

They felt similar to the nerves inside me when I channeled mana. A blue network running all across my body, the electric tingling when I cracked my elbow on the backrest of the chair.

“Hmm,” Falar said, and the way he said it made my face go cold.

“It does react oddly, yes,” Jextor said. “The matrix should be more stable. Almost like there’s something interfering. I will reinforce it against more Null than expected.”

The blue network flared, the sparks of light running faster. Mana. Channeling.

Nerves.

“It’s not dead!” I shouted.

“We know,” Falar said. “A particular kind of undeath, stuck between worlds. Similar, but not quite the same as—”

“Not stuck! Not undead. Just not dead, at all!” I screamed, waving my hands at them. I wanted to slap or punch Jextor to make him listen, but he was in the middle of drawing new runes and interrupting him felt riskier than anything else.

“Impossible,” Falar said. “The amount of Null…” His voice trailed off and he rubbed his chin with his hand. “Practically impossible, surely?”

“What does it mean if it’s alive?” I shouted. My legs kept aching. Why did my legs ache so damn much?

Falar ground his teeth together. I heard the sound through the soup of different sensations, all pressing in on me. The rot, the hate, the sickly purple light, the pure white of the circle.

“What does it mean?” I howled. “There’s lightning running inside it, not just the Null!”

“It’s magic!” Minnelil shouted, eyes almost closed like she always had when trying to sense things. “As much magic as Null!”

“Only fools ignore two students agreeing,” Jextor said, swiping his hand through the runes he had just drawn, dispersing them. The blue sphere bent inward, the threads fraying into thinner strands, pulling apart.

“You’ll lose it,” Falar said. “The trap needs to—”

You never had me.

The voice crashed over me. Falar’s knees buckled, and even Jextor grunted, grimacing.

“Ignore it!” Falar shouted. “Jextor, containment!”

You can not contain infinity.

Jextor continued drawing runes. “You’d be surprised,” he said, his mouth a thin line behind his bushy beard. For once, he wasn’t laughing.

I had no idea what he was doing, but I hoped he did. Grit ran around the circle, the runes blazing and sputtering out here and there. Her white forehead was wet with sweat, glistening and reflecting the light.

Falar walked around in the opposite direction as her, hands clasped behind his back. He had his eyes squinted almost shut, muttering as he walked. “A development, to be sure.”

The presence strained against whatever it was the ritual was doing to it. Grit was keeping the runes intact, somehow. The voice changed, turning from a torn howl into a focused hiss.

Surely you didn’t believe this could work? Small men, pretending they can control everything. They can’t control the slightest little thing. Can they, girl?

Jextor’s hands stopped weaving runes and Falar stopped mid-step.

“You will focus on me,” Jextor growled, continuing drawing again. He was clenching his teeth together, sweat running profusely down his bald head. The runes he had drawn sputtered.

It had to be a trick. The entity had said what I feared the most, what I knew to be true, but refused to believe, or the other way around. Minnelil’s knuckles were white as she clenched her hands together.

Invite me in. Break the circle. I will preserve your elven friend, perhaps even those two mediocre men.

“Hey, what about us?” Fek asked.

Break the circle, girl. Let me in. No ward can hold me. No barrier can turn away death. You know it. You know it. You know it.

Grit stumbled and fell, tripping over her feet. She panted, staying on her knees on the floor.

Otherwise I will take them all.

“You complete bastard!” I shouted. “You won’t touch any of them, you boring, corpse licking, meaningless rotten clump of a turd!”

The circle started to dim, the light overtaken by dark. Minnelil shouted something at me, but this wasn’t their fight. None of theirs.

“Um,” Jextor said. “If it really is sentient, angering it might not…”

I hadn’t even gotten started yet.

Last time, I hadn’t found the words, but now the thing threatened my friends. Even if it would be doing me a favor if it ate Falar and Jextor, it wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Those two had had their chance, and I’d had enough of them and the entity and this goddamn ritual. If it wanted someone, it could try me.

“Intestine-dragging pus-bloated blob of snot, morbid and corpulent slab of flabby dead fat!” I continued screaming.

The runes were getting really dark. The janitor pushed Fek on the back, nodding his head at the circle.

“Take your threats, you septic, old-man smelling stain of an afterbirth, and shove them right up you—”

“Huh?” I asked. My mouth felt sticky and I smacked my lips a couple of times. “Why am I on the floor?”

“Why am I on the floor, she asks,” Falar said, stepping next to Minnelil to look down at me. “After turning the full ire of an unknown adversary on yourself and hijacking a carefully planned ritual to insult a power rivaling anything recorded so far.”

“It made me mad,” I said.

“We noticed!” Jextor boomed, appearing next to Falar. “You got us the distraction we needed and the boy handled the rest.”

“Hi,” Fek said, pushing between them both.

“Let her have some space,” Grit said weakly from my left side. She was lying on the floor, arms and legs splayed. “And why is no one checking how I’m doing?”

“You did and are doing fine,” Falar said. “I would scold you for being dramatic, but it’s practically part of the education. The chosen tone leaves a lot to be desired, though.”

“You have no idea how much,” Grit muttered.

“Shut up,” I groaned. “I’m not yet ready for banter. What the hell happened? Why am I on the floor?”

Falar rolled his eyes and turned away. Jextor laughed and the sound made my ears ring.

Minnelil smiled down at me. “Don’t worry. Sit up and I’ll fill you in on everything that happened.”