We’d met before in my dreams. Only those times, I’d woken up without remembering what had happened. It had tried on many occasions to put me under like it had everybody else. Its thwarted attempts to wear me down were an irritant I felt now in its thoughts. I saw then this entity was responsible for the mess in the kitchen and the warning in my room. The cloud reformed into a mass of sharp spines.
I gathered moisture from the icy air to turn the salt into molten shards of my own. My magic collided with the entity in a crushing chasm of power. I screamed as its ill intent broke the magic circle around me. At the same time, I asked the liquid salt to disperse into grains again. Each grain pulsed as it embedded into the cloud. Salt was the poster child of low magic. Made in our oceans and fed into our earth, every grain hummed with power. As the entity forced me to my knees, I directed the salt into a swirling mass of a tornado. It gathered up every scrap of the cloud in its wake, growing bigger and bigger until it started to drag at the other half.
Charles croaked. I grabbed another handful from the packet on the floor and threw it over him. The entity hissed. In my mind I heard it screaming as the salt burned it with low magic. The whirlwind continued to pick up grains. When it moved over Charles’s bed, it gathered speed and momentum. The added grains caused the cloud to become dense.
Shoving myself up into a standing position, I threw my arms up into the air. I wiped a trickle of blood from my nostril. Charles sputtered as the salt cyclone dragged the last vestiges of the demon from his throat. I heard him gasping for air but couldn’t take my eyes off the thing in front of me.
The demon tried one last time to bore into my thoughts. It attempted to wear me down with images of fatigue and restlessness. A chill of impending doom stirred in me. The demon showed me the plans its master had for the Academy. I caught a brief glimpse of thousands of one-eyed demons before the image was rebuffed by the clarifying power of the winterflower still flowing through my body. I wouldn’t be sleeping for a while, but it was completely worth it. Taking a step forward, I bent down and broke off an icicle that had formed on the lip of the desk beside the door. I tossed the ice into the swirl of mist. When it hit the cloud, it sizzled.
That was all the moisture I needed to turn the swirling mass into saline. The creature in my head screamed anew. Saltwater burned like crazy, I was told. Taking my lead from the demon itself, I directed my magic into transmuting the liquid into ice. In my thoughts, I heard a voice that belonged to an old man long dead. Whenever I read my great-grandfather’s diary, I imagined him as a doting old man. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to function. Great-grandfather instructed me to picture the grains of salt solidifying as though kissed by the winds of the arctic. The magic in my mind grew heavy.
With a muted whimper, I made a forward motion. The chunk of salted ice fell to the ground and smashed into a million tiny shards. I heard a pop like all the air was being sucked out of the room. I sagged on one knee and gulped in heavy breaths. The Fae lights turned back on. Ice cracked as the cold in the room began to recede. I had every intention of checking if Charles was okay, but my progress was halted by claws biting into my shoulder.
“I knew this would happen sooner or later,” the deputy headmaster rasped. He sounded drowsy. It didn’t dampen his strength much. He ripped me back towards him and caged me with one arm around my chest. In his other hand was my great-grandfather’s diary.
“Get off!” I screamed. He dragged me aside as seniors funnelled into the room around me. Their eyes were all puffy. One of them yawned. A couple of Nephilim guards followed suit. Their movements were sluggish.
“Let her go,” Max snapped. His voice was the only one still sharp. He stood in the doorway, blocking anybody else from entering. He took a step towards us.
The deputy headmaster waved my great-grandfather’s book in the air. Max stopped in his tracks. His grey eyes had turned golden as he took in the name embossed in silver in the brown leather. He glanced at me, his jaw tight.
“What are you doing with this?” the deputy headmaster demanded before Max could speak. His arm was crushing my lungs. “What have you done to everyone?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I huffed, trying to push at his hold. It wasn’t working.
One of the Nephilim snatched the diary from the deputy headmaster. Max’s expression had turned stony. He marched over to the bed where his little brother was passed out.
“This is contraband,” the Nephilim announced.
“Yes I know but –”
“Take her to the dungeon,” the deputy headmaster ordered.
“Wait! No, you don’t understand.” The Nephilim reached out to grab my arm. I locked my sights on Max.
“This isn’t the end!” I screamed as the world rippled in front of my eyes from the teleport. “Don’t let them take over!”
Charles’s room disappeared as the Nephilim and I dematerialised. When next I opened my eyes, I was in a cold cement room with no windows. A single Fae lamp stood in the far corner. Its wan light was just enough to highlight the stark room. There were chalk marks on the floor like someone had been using the room to practice their magic circles. The Nephilim placed me in the corner of the room. He waved his hands and glowing white bars appeared around me. The effect was that I