Namu hated this world, this school, and magick, even though he was only sixteen. He could not stand the emptiness he felt every day as he walked the halls. Especially the one he walked now. His hall. The hall of Raido with the tilted R for the rune. Five floors up from the main floor of the school. The hall that stood for journeys, pleasure, and healing.
He would probably laugh at the irony of it if he didn’t have jagged gaping holes in his very soul given to him by this floor.
All thanks to a secret antechamber that had to be in his room for some reason that led to a tormenting door. He wondered if he would ever fully laugh again.
No. He would. One day he would laugh. One day he would feel whole again. He would fix this.
And Mr. Vero, the only teacher and person who knew about what had happened to him, was going to help him. He had promised.
Namu would hold him to that.
A flash of anger flared through Namu’s mind at the thought of the professor. None of this should have happened. Mr. Vero should have been one of the teachers who had protected him. Even if the school had placed him there, Mr. Vero should never have allowed Namu to be in that room.
Although that door had ended the horrors of the outside world twenty-something years ago, it had created nightmares for anyone who had found themselves inside it, like him.
He still didn’t understand why that door had to be placed in a student’s room in a school full of kids. Why would they put the core of the spell that had gotten rid of all weapons here?
He was going to leave once he was healed. He would leave and go back to the normal life he had always wanted. He would never come back to this. He would work in construction like his dad and hopefully never have to think of the world beyond that door or Lockdrest again. Which was one of the reasons why he had never told his family what had happened. He never wanted to be faced with pity or fear in their eyes once it all passed and he fixed this.
Inky black tendrils that were most likely the fingers of some kind of creature or beast waved out of a stony crack between two doors in his hall. Namu wanted to ignore it. Wanted to roll his eyes at it and walk away. But he found he couldn’t. It was hard to ignore things, especially something that was unique like this to his hall. Some people, especially Mr. Vero, didn’t understand that. How was he expected to ignore something that had changed him forever? Something that through some kind of magick had forced metallic chaos through his veins. That had torn literal holes in his soul.
That metal was pulsing now to the beat of his heart. The holes gaped wider each and every day.
The black fingers continued to crawl out down the wall until they could reach no further. Then the smoke-like blackness retreated back into the wall, then completely disappeared.
Namu shook his head, letting his eyes travel down the endless cracks where many other kinds of beings, monsters, and creatures had never been able to get through. Anyone brave enough to get close could see them through the cracks if the creatures hadn’t already gone. It was always as if they had accidentally found their way behind the wall and could never find their way back. He rarely saw the same creatures or things twice.
As if in answer, two-deep orbed eyes the color of the ocean stared at him until they blinked out and were gone.
He hated this school.
It was ironic that the hall he had been placed in, which gave beings from other places the ability to travel here only within the walls, was the hall that had been given the door. He was sure there was meaning to that.
Namu gave a deep sigh, bit the inside of his cheek, and pulled out his phone to check the time. Bright green numbers illuminated the screen, telling him he would be late if he didn’t rush. He had three minutes to get downstairs for his special session with Mr. Vero—one of many Namu was sure they would have together over the year to try to find a way for spirit magick to fill up the holes that the monstrous creatures behind the door had torn into him.
He headed to the stairwell. He noticed the light scars on the dark skin of his hand from when he had helped his dad with construction work years ago. He wished his dad could come to the school and see how uniquely built it was. He knew his dad would especially love the stairwell, with its many stones embedded in the dark hardwood. Namu had tried taking pictures of it to send to his dad, but the images couldn’t capture the extraordinary design.
When Namu reached Fehu hall, the first hall before the main floor, he had to blink his eyes to get them to stop watering. This was where Lily’s room was. Lily was the friend he had followed to Lockdrest and the only reason he had come. Lily was lucky that their hall had gilded walls, doors, and no creatures coming in between any cracks.
Next was the main floor, which was deserted at this time, as most students were in their classes, which were held in the basement. Mr. Vero had set aside this hour, the class period before lunch, to work with Namu since it was hard to find any other time in the day. With all the other classes going on and then online schooling for non-magickal school happening in the evening, so no one would fall behind in the non-magickal world, there was barely any spare time during any given day.
Namu pulled out his phone from the back pocket of his cargo shorts again; he was two minutes late. He ran down the wider grand staircase that led to the basement, annoyed at himself, then rushed to Mr. Vero’s classroom.
But someone was in the basement standing in the middle of the hall that held the classrooms. Anger swept through Namu’s heart.
The older boy was practicing extracting some of his soul from his body right outside of the second highest-level classroom for Spirit Magick Three. The older boy’s ghostly purple spirit left his hand, until he had two. A transparent one and his physical one.
The spirit part of him was whole and healthy. It had no holes.
The boy smiled, turned the handle to the classroom he had been standing in front of, and walked into the class.
Chipper, proud of himself, happy.
Something Namu may never be.
He was most likely trying to prove to the teacher where he should be placed. He was probably a student who might have failed Spirit Magick Two last year and was desperate to get into Spirit Magick Three.
Namu shook his head and continued to where he needed to go.
Mr. Vero had left the door open and was sitting at his desk looking bored until he saw Namu. Then, his serious blue eyes lifted, and his thick lips stretched into a teasing smile.
“Look who’s late for once.”
Namu didn’t say anything. This was why he didn’t want to be late. He knew Mr. Vero would find fun in it.
“Namu, be careful. If you don’t cheer up slightly, I might threaten not to start until you smile.”
Namu contorted his mouth to a scowl in Mr. Vero’s direction as the Spirit Magicks Four teacher stood up and made his way around his large wooden desk. His black shirt clung to his muscular arms and hugged the small pudge of his stomach.
“Let’s get started,” Namu pressed, his jaw clenching. He hated how desperate he was. How empty.
Mr. Vero smiled, bending down only slightly to be at eye level with him.
Namu didn’t understand why Mr. Vero didn’t reflect any of the pain that Namu felt and why he was still at the school. About twenty years ago, during his time as a student, the door had formed in Mr. Vero’s room, which was Namu’s room now. It was at that time Mr. Vero had been the one who had gotten lost deep inside it, just like Namu had last year.
“Mr. Vero—”
“Once again, Namu, Mr. V. You can call me Mr. V. We went through this all of last year.”
That wasn’t true. They had only started going through it after Mr. Vero had saved him from beyond the door. That had been when half the year had already passed.
“Mr. Vero. I would like to get started so we can move on.” So he could leave the school and never look back. He had been told by Mr. Vero just to ignore the door if that was what he wanted, and leaving was the easiest way to do that.
But he could only leave if he found out how to heal himself from what had happened in that dreadful place. And the only place that could help him do that was also the one place he didn’t want to be: this school.
Mr. Vero sighed deeply, looking into Namu’s eyes for a moment before straightening up and walking back to his desk. He pulled at the bands of his black shirt around his pasty biceps before picking up a pot containing a thin, twisted tree from the floor and putting it on his desk with a thud.
Namu walked around a couple of the desks, studying the potted tree that should have been outside. Last year, Mr. Vero and Namu had tried symbols, runes, transformation drinks, meditations, and even some of the magick that most students in the school were blocked from learning here like chaos magick. Now he wanted to try a tree?
“I’m surprised—pleasantly, of course—that you returned,” Mr. Vero winked, which made Namu want to turn away, but he didn’t. He just stared at the fragile-looking tree with the twisted stump that Namu could easily wrap his whole hand around. It had only four leaves sprouting from the top that were a deep lively green.
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“I delayed meeting with you these last couple days so I could prepare some suggestions and you could get settled for another year. I want to start slow this year with your healing.”
“What were you doing all summer then?” While I’ve been suffering and trying to figure things out alone, Namu thought. He had learned that it was impossible for him to do anything at home without the school and its resources. The internet had very little to say about any dimensional worlds, especially ones containing creatures that ate away at your soul.
“I have my own things to do, Namu. You know this.”
“You live at this school, though, guarding that door. Why would the headmasters give you that job if you aren’t that good at it? Why have they not tried to get rid of it? Why do they leave it for kids to find their way into?” And die.
Mr. Vero only nodded, ignoring Namu’s questions like he always did. He smiled again, pushing the plant toward Namu. “We will try this first. An easy transfer, something you should be learning more about in class with Mr. Dreft this year since I bumped you to Spirit Magick Three. I thought maybe if you try to take the spirit of a living thing like this tree—”
Namu backed away. He knew that almost everything, according to Spirit Magick One, had a spirit, but stealing a spirit from something, like parts of his spirit had been stolen from him? He didn’t want to do that.
“Namu, I know it sounds alarming, but the spirit may possibly live on inside of you. Like if a tree is cut down and made into a table or paper, part of its spirit still lives on in many things until it passes on into the other life.”
“Possibly?”
Mr. Vero bit his lip and ran his hand through his long black hair. “You said you were willing to do almost anything. It’s just a tree.”
“It still has a spirit.”
“Which may continue to live on in you if you take it in. Then it may mend and mold with you. Since it’s living, it may fill up the holes in your soul.”
“But what happens if it doesn’t work?”
“You know this is new, Namu. New for all of us. I don’t know. I cannot answer that question. I figured you would at least want to try.”
Namu shoved away from the desk and turned away from his teacher. He hated how new this all was. It shouldn’t be new. The school should have figured this out.
Other students had found their way through the door and had died before Namu had found his way inside. Namu was only one of two people who had survived. Mr. Vero was the first to survive when he went in years ago as a student. But Mr. Vero came away barely eaten, with only one or two holes in his soul, not like the twenty or more that Namu had; he had given up counting long ago as tears overtook him each time he tried. He only let himself look at his spirit-self now when he expelled part of his soul from his body to check to see if anything they had been trying to heal him with had worked, even though he could feel that he wasn’t healing inside.
It had been over half a year, and not one of the holes in his soul had gotten smaller or been healed. He had always heard of people losing pieces of themselves, but to see that he lost visual parts of himself when he looked down at his arm or torso in spirit form; to not see his full self there, it burned inside.
“It isn’t fair. I shouldn’t be the one being experimented on.”
“If you’re not ready to try this, I understand,” Mr. Vero said.
But what was Namu supposed to do if he wasn’t willing to try these new things? Live incomplete forever? Never live out his dreams or, even if he did, never be satisfied because he had lost the part of himself that allowed him to be happy? Never find a wife because he only had bits of himself to give, which wasn’t fair to anyone?
“Okay,” he said, defeated. “Tell me what to do.”
Mr. Vero slid the pot to the middle of the desk then grabbed some marble slabs, clanking them against each other. “I know spirit magick is complicated. And I have briefly discussed before how spirits can be destroyed IF and only IF they have been out of a host for a long time, have no placement, and are not bonded to something.”
Namu cringed. He remembered that in his readings. How a spirit from humans, creatures, and certain other things could, in a way, be sucked up and its magick used, but that was usually done by experts, and it was looked down upon.
Namu hated the idea of destroying someone else’s soul, since the same kinds of spells relating to spirit magick could be used using one’s own spirit, which could then be replenished when doing something that person loves that grants them fulfillment and contentment. Destroying one’s soul while doing a spell was hard because spirit magick actively drains the person using it and should stop them before they caused too much damage to themselves. It is self-adjusting. What someone usually did was borrow or use a little bit of soul essence from something, which meant not taking the whole spirit, only the essence or energy of it. Taking the essence of a soul mainly worked on objects that weren’t alive and only gave a little boost to most spells, but at least a whole someone or something wasn’t destroyed in the process.
Mr. Vero set the two slabs of pink-and-white-veined marble on the student desk closest to Namu. “The hope is that if you can take the spirit from this tree and bond it to you, it will stay in you and not disintegrate into your own soul. Maybe then it will fill up the parts of you that you are missing. Over time, we can work on different kinds of transformation magicks to get it to meld better with your soul and partly change so you feel more like yourself again.”
“Leaving the tree to die?”
“The body of the tree… well, yes. It isn’t like taking a soul’s essence from something. For this, we need an ‘alive’ thing and need to take in the whole. Last year, remember, taking the essence of unalive things did not work. The remaining parts of your soul used them up, saving the reserves for spirit magickal use while not touching the holes in your spirit.”
“Yes.” They had tried taking the essence of some of his books about construction, random statues that Mr. Vero assumed Namu found intriguing, and other things that Mr. Vero thought may give Namu any sense of delight when viewing or using on a normal day. Nothing had worked.
“That is why, hopefully, this alive thing will be drawn to your empty spaces and fill them up since it might want a space of its own to fill. Then maybe we can bond it there to stay until… well, we can make those parts less tree-like, I guess.”
Namu tilted his head back and looked up at the five small chandeliers on the ceiling above them, giving off hazy yellow light. He didn’t understand why the school had decided to modernize some rooms, while leaving others untouched. Maybe it depended on the teacher.
“Directions. So. Use this transfer symbol like I’ve shown you before, but this time, you need to add these parts to it for the Tree of Life.”
Mr. Vero took a thick quartz wand from his pocket drew what looked like an S at first but then it became a leaf at the end of an overturned tail with two dots at the top and bottom onto the marble plates.
“You will draw the spirit of the tree out with your own, making a connection like I taught you. Then draw this symbol twice, once into the tree’s spirit and then into your own hands. When you connect with the tree, take it in. Then put your spirit hands in the marble and concentrate to become one. That simple. The hardest part will be concentrating, if you want it to settle, and trying not to make yourself sick.”
“Because I’m becoming one with a tree...”
Mr. Vero ignored him.
Namu sighed and went over to the tree to get to work. First, he let himself go, but not completely. He held onto himself, his persona, as if on a string, but let freedom of the world around him wash over him, creating a floating feeling. He felt his soul wanting to connect back with his body like two magnets, but that force became weaker the further he let his soul slip away from what held his soul in place.
And then he saw them.
His hands, transparent-blue. One with a big empty circle in the middle of it as the spirit of his hands was leaving through his palms. Then the spirit-form of his forearms started to escape. In them, he saw three more holes.
Holes that left him disconnected from the world and from himself.
He let his spirit call out to the tree, which was easy compared to some of the spirits he had to call out to in classes before. Like called to like. He looked beyond the tree and took it in as if he knew it, and let his subconscious guide his way. The tree was strong and was built for greater things, just like he was. He grasped onto those similarities and slowly pulled the spirit of the tree out of itself.
It came out like a wisp.
The wisp was white, unlike his blue. The tree’s wisp was thin and new, yet the further he pulled, there were layers of old, as if from the seeds and lives before it. He pulled just enough to not disconnect it or break it completely, but enough so that he had room to write.
Without losing his concentration, he looked down at the marble slabs containing the symbols and lines Mr. Vero had waiting for him to remind him what he needed to write. Then, using his spirit finger, guided by his corporeal one, he drew that symbol in two spots into the tree’s spirit.
He withdrew his hand from the tree and traced that symbol onto the palms of his hands through his spirit form. The symbols began to glow a deep white and then blue.
Taking a deep breath, Namu looked for Mr. Vero’s approval. The teacher nodded, then Namu placed both palms against the two symbols he had made on the tree’s spirit and closed his eyes.
Like called to like.
He drew the spirit in.
He let it fill him up.
It filled his essence at first. The first layer of his soul.
Then the stronghold of the tree went deeper. The beauty, the future of many possibilities, and the roots dug so deep that he inhaled and took it all in.
He placed his hands on the cool surfaces of the smooth marble slabs.
The symbols lit up with a shocking fit of light before they dulled like he knew the tree was doing behind him. Dying and dulling. Living the rest of its life through him, having given itself to him to use.
He tried to feel it fill him completely. Tried to take the firmness of the tree and collide it with his full self enough to fill the holes, enough to heal all his aching.
But he still felt empty…
Until, for a moment, he didn’t.
He felt it then. Every piece of himself held onto a feeling of strength, of stubborn desire.
He was whole.
He was one with himself. One with the earth. One with the world.
Until it began to wither.
He closed his eyes, biting his lip until he felt pain. He tried to keep the feeling of wholeness there for good, tried to make it stick, but it was slipping away. The metal from that place behind the door was stirring in him. Eating away at the gratification by reminding him of the mistake he had made and who he now was.
He passed out.
He was back in that place. A bruised purple sky above him. The sky that haunted him every night in his sleep. It was looking down at him. No matter how hard he tried to look away, he couldn’t.
His eyes were frozen open. Petrified. Just as they were before.
Forced to look up into the otherworldly sky as purple starry dust sprinkled down, unable to move or blink. He was trapped inside a husk of black metal. Black metal that was burning his flesh.
He wanted to scream but couldn’t. He wanted to cry out for being here again, but could not. He wanted nothing more than to free his body, but those creatures were there again.
Those white creatures, who, at first, he had thought had come to save him. Small, and as big as his hand, with three heads and three little toes. They began crawling all over his metal husk, leaving tiny tingles all around him.
He couldn’t count them. He could only feel them. And only now. Only because he had done this before, he knew what they would need.
He didn’t want to live it all over again.
But, once again, he was forced to.
His hand was outstretched, reaching for the metal trees. That was the first place the creature bit as it dug its head into him and took a chunk from his soul.
The first bite was freezing. He was left cold and in shock.
Until slowly, he was devoured. Creatures were crawling over his eyes and everywhere else, until they stopped and then dug in deep for another bite. One on his chest, one on his neck, one on his arm.
He couldn’t breathe.
He was going to die and lose everything. Completely lose himself all over again.
All because he went through that mysterious door. A door that no one had warned him about. Not the Headmasters or Mr. Vero when they knew.
He had to pull away.
It was then that he did, just like he had before when it was his first time. His soul tore away from his body. The threads that held him together pulled to their limit with a yank. He fell and then watched as the tiny creatures kept digging into his metal husk. There were so many of them.
With only bits of himself left, he ran. Stumbling, not knowing where to go or how to escape, he ran to the door that had closed behind him, locking him in, and found that he could pass right through it, which he did, leaving his body behind. After that, he passed through walls until he found himself outside Mr. Vero’s door. The one teacher who had given brief clues and warnings before. The one who then went back with him to save his body. The one who could not save him now.