Namu yelled out then accidentally bit his tongue when he clamped his mouth shut while the nurse took pliers and peeled parts of his melted shirt out of his skin.
“I’m sorry. Faster this way,” she whispered, scraping along his raw flesh. At least she had stopped the bleeding with magick.
Lily’s burns were tightening as they dried with the ointment put all down their legs. They were not glistening wet anymore, and some of the outer edges were returning to their normal skin.
Namu couldn’t believe that Lily and Molly had come looking for him.
The thought of Molly going back to the place made Namu bite his tongue harder in guilt. He hoped she would be okay. He knew she was the best choice because of what she was. Out of everyone, she had the best chance of her soul being okay if she was wrapped in a metal cocoon again. He just hoped that nothing else would happen to her and that stopping the app would be easy enough so she could get back to them. Then, hopefully, they could solve the problem of that world taking over the school. The problem he had created so he didn’t hurt anyone else.
Once the app was disposed of, hopefully, the affliction would slow down, and they would be given more time.
He tried to tear his thoughts away from the students being scattered by the teachers around the empty shelves in the green glow of the library, along with the one student he had seen upstairs, who was now a frozen statue. If the teachers couldn’t stop the growing metal on their bodies, the ones in the library might turn into statues also. And if they did turn to statues, if the teachers failed, Namu would have ruined their lives. It was a punch in the gut to know he had destroyed the life of that one student upstairs just as severely as he had ruined his own the day he had first walked through that door. He didn’t know what to do with that guilt. He didn’t know what to do with the heaviness of having all the blame on him for once, instead of deflecting it off to someone else like he had Mr. Vero.
That boy… that boy would blame him…
In trying to save anyone else from slipping into that place, he had instead brought that place here. He was an idiot. Maybe even more so because it did not change his want to find another way to be rid of that door for good. He could not seem to find a middle ground when it came to that. If the door hadn’t been there, if it wasn’t there, none of this would have happened.
“What do we do now?” Lily asked.
“We hope this works,” Namu answered.
Koz had found a book in Mrs. Yitter’s locked-away shelf library in her office handwritten by a woman named Oplin Betrist who had a passion for creating magickal concoctions. She was the one who had found how to make the astral transformation spell.
Koz had inputted it into the classification system and went into the techno database to find the connection from the system to the shelves. By inputting a code and pouring a couple of the vials, he planned for the shelves to spout the liquid like the shelves did when they glitched after trying to input a new book into the system.
They would see if it would help all the affected students perform an astral-spell all at once. Koz said it should be safe; that the library system of old magick actually did something that replicated the configuration, as if it taught itself and knew what to draw from to make more. In this incident, with how easily Koz had found the correlation, it was almost as if the school was encouraging him to save the students and itself. If the school system kept producing the astral-transformation spell, maybe it could help the school break away from the metal too. Or at least begin to until they came up with another plan.
At first, Namu wondered why they didn’t just give each student a vial, but then he learned it was because they could not make enough of them. This way was faster. They needed to use the drinks that they had for emergency use for the students who could not make it down here or for the teachers who needed to act fast. They could not risk the teachers getting turned into statues. They needed them to finish up spells to try to fight this whole thing off. They also wanted the astral-spell solution to flood the school, maybe seep into the wood, into its foundation, and do something.
It was worth a try.
It was odd seeing students with little bits of metal growing on them, some at a faster rate than others. One student had an entire arm that was now metal. One had a blotch of metal growing off his neck like a mass. It was interesting how differently the metal acted at the school than it had in that world. He remembered the metal on his thigh thickening and clutching onto him instead of layering all around him. But then that boy upstairs in that hall… the metal had layered over and completely enveloped him. Maybe the magick was unstable here. More chaotic. But what would happen if at some point it wasn’t anymore? Would students turn to metal statues immediately like he had and have no chance to get out?
He heard the rip of a bandage before he felt it pressed against his skin. The nurse had cut a square in his shirt to give her room to work without him having to remove it. It felt nice to be completely covered again with the bandage. He felt less vulnerable and less naked.
“Working in this green light…” she mumbled, shaking her head. “Anything else?”
His head hurt from the door hitting him and knocking him out. He wondered if he had bruise on it, but he didn’t say anything. He wanted her to go away. He shook his head.
The nurse ran off to help other students. Namu then got up painfully with a grunt and walked to where he could get a better view of what would happen. There were thirty-something students spread apart around the library shelves waiting with a teacher by each one’s side.
Koz pushed a button.
Then the purple liquid came spraying and leaking out of the shelves. It started at a shelf near the back area, the remedies and transformation drinks section, then began sparking its effects all around.
The students held their mouths open to drink. One by one, the students turned to mist, and whatever metals had been on their bodies dropped to the ground. The teachers immediately solidified each student’s bodies and dragged their drenched selves out of the spray.
Once every student was done and gathered, three teachers led them in a line to the classroom with a hole in a wall leading them outside.
Namu stayed behind.
Mr. Vero came over. “How long will this run for?” he asked Koz.
“I’m not sure,” Koz replied. “Maybe as long as the computers aren’t destroyed, maybe not long at all. These glitches are new. I know techno magick, but techno magick mixed with old magick is still so new. I’m surprised putting that solution into the computer system worked the way it did. It probably wouldn’t have if the school’s essence wasn’t also fighting against this thing.”
“Let’s hope it continues to run long enough for the school to get some of the solution. I need it to seep into the concrete or wood or whatever is partially alive so that the metal will have less of a grip.”
“Will that really work?” Lily asked. “Seems insane to me.”
“It’s the best idea I have right now. Everything has a spiritual essence, so astral-spells can work in different ways on many things. I have studied it in blocks of wood before.” He looked down at the carpet and then over at the concrete by the stairs, shifting to metal the moment he did so. “Let’s just hope it works for concrete too. We need to save the school and stop the metal altogether. Otherwise, it might keep spreading through the opened door and attack everything in this world. What do we do if it gets into the water off the island? If it gets to the cities? We have to go!”
“But Molly…”
“I’m sure she’ll find her way out. If she doesn’t, we’ll get her when all this is done.”
Lily did not look so sure about Mr. Vero’s suggestion.
Mr. Vero led them through the basement, where the metal was moving faster, threatening to nip them at their heels. They then went through the classroom with the giant hole at an upward angle leading to the grassy outside. Koz grabbed Rem’s hand, his laptop still in his other hand, and helped her climb out, keeping her steady. He went next after shoving the laptop into the pack he had strung over his shoulder and chest. Then Lily went, then Namu.
They all stood on a drawn white circle as Mr. Vero cast the spell of light that would rid them of the residue and dust from that world so they wouldn’t spread it. Each student had to go through a flash before being sent further outside away from the school building.
Namu had to give it to the teachers; they had been very proficient in making sure that anything from that world had been contained using novel ideas he never would have dreamed of.
“Hey!”
Namu looked down into the hole in the wall they had climbed out of. It was Molly. He couldn’t help but grin as he reached down his hand to help pull her out. She looked exhausted.
“Is it done?” Mr. Vero asked outside the circle, lighting it up again before letting Molly go beyond it. She closed her eyes as the light struck her and waited for Mr. Vero to nod to tell her she was in the clear.
“Yes. I destroyed it,” she said, stepping out. “And it felt as if the world calmed down somewhat afterward.”
Namu saw a girl trying to run out of the crowd of students waiting together and watching the school, but a teacher froze her in place. Namu ignored the slight commotion and looked at the boxes of books the group had brought outside. Would they need to search through all of those? Did one of them contain the information they needed to know how to stop the spread?
“Ova!” Molly yelled, making him jump. It felt as if a knife had been stabbed into his side.
Molly was running to the girl who had been frozen. Namu watched as Molly threw her arms around the frozen girl and begged the teacher to let her go.
“What now?” Lily asked, watching Molly alongside Namu. Mr. Vero was talking to other teachers.
Namu turned back to look at the school, now completely covered in that black metal. It was as if it had its own cast. Namu ground his teeth at the thought that the school had trapped its own soul inside.
“I don’t know… I guess we wait for the teachers to figure out something.”
“Don’t give me that, you lazy bum!” Lily shouted. They shook their head. “Now tell me about that door! If you already would have, I might have figured this out by now. What exactly is it?”
“It’s where they had stored the disintegrated weapons from that giant spell. Apparently, they had to store it in a dimension that they put in a school.” His anger burned as hot as that metal.
“Makes sense,” Lily nodded.
“How does that make sense? Putting kids in danger makes sense? The door is in my room! I didn’t even know about it. Kids have gone in there and died! I almost died!”
“Well, you didn’t die. And apparently, they were stupid, and so are you. Why go through a door you know nothing about?”
“You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t have. I didn’t tell you about it because I knew you would have.”
Lily shrugged. “I can admit that I’m sometimes stupid too. At least this teaches us that we need to learn to protect ourselves before we dive head-first into things.”
Namu shook his head. “Sometimes you can’t protect yourself at all.”
“You didn’t die,” Lily pointed out.
“I was lucky about that, but I have holes in my soul now. Holes that that won’t go away. That I’ve been trying to heal.”
“What?”
Namu called out to a part of his soul to show her. His arm. Lily swallowed hard, staring at the spiritual arm with three missing chunks, then looked him hard in the eyes. “That’s why you’ve been working with Mr. Vero.”
“Of course.”
Lily shook their head. “You’re such a wimp.”
“What?”
“You had such a big problem like that and wouldn’t tell me? And now you’ll let this thing beat you and destroy the whole school and world! What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you, Lily!? How is this my fault? And I’m not letting it beat me. I’m letting the teachers do their jobs!”
“How is it not? You did this! So, you help me figure this out. Stop whining over what happened to you and figure out how to fix this. You lived. Learn from it and help me.”
“Why? So you can get all the glory?”
Lily smiled. “Of course.”
Namu sighed. Lily had him worked up just like they used to do in non-magickal school the day before a test when Namu told them he knew he would fail. Lily would then call him an idiot and the stupidest person in the world, so he would stay up all night studying just to prove them wrong. Then they would take all the glory and say he had only passed because of them.
They worked well together that way.
He studied the school before them again and began to talk as his thoughts flowed. “When I was in that other world, I was trapped. Like that boy upstairs. The metal surrounded me to… I think to cage my soul. It paralyzed me for days. Those creatures—”
Lily stopped him. “So the metal is trapping the school’s soul. Okay. Does whoever go into that world get trapped in metal like this?”
Namu nodded, appreciating Lily for stopping him. He didn’t want to relive what he went through right now, even if it was just through words.
“Those creatures ate parts of your soul. The chunks I saw out of it that can’t heal.” Lily was piecing things together. “That’s why Mr. Vero prioritized capturing those creatures so they couldn’t do that again.”
Namu waited. He loved seeing their mind work, even though they were biting their lip, almost making it bleed like they did every time they tore apart processes like this.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“But then why send Molly back in there? Why is Molly different? When Molly and you disappeared, she got trapped in that world, didn’t she? And you guys got her out. But then you let her go again just now. She said that she was the only one who would be safe. And she arrived at school with that mini-troll. What’s with her? How is she different?”
“She’s an empty vessel.”
Lily’s brows furrowed. It was obvious Lily had never heard of that before. It was something Lily couldn’t figure out or put together, just like Namu couldn’t until Koz had told him exactly what an empty vessel was.
“Apparently, it means that her soul is new. Spirits easily take her over. She came to this school to learn how to protect herself. When she was trapped in the metal, her soul folded in on itself, and the creatures couldn’t get to it, unlike—” Namu stopped.
They looked at each other in silence. Then smiles widened on each of their faces.
They had an idea.
Lily ran to Mr. Vero first, waving their arms. “We need to make a new school!”
Namu stopped running mid-stride and bent over to laugh. That was not exactly how he would have stated it, but it would work.
“What?” Mr. Vero said.
“Namu, help me explain!”
Namu shook his head, still laughing. “This is all you.”
Lily huffed, “That school. That’s an old soul, right? The metal is eating it. New souls are souls that things want to take over, right? Like empty vessels.”
“Umm… no. Not exactly, I don’t think.”
Lily ignored him. “If we combine visionary magick, gnome magick, and I don’t know what else—” Lily was an expert at combining visionary and gnome, except they always said that it wasn’t enough. That they needed to go further, like their dad had and implement new magicks to make something extraordinary. “—then we could try to draw that metal to the new school to overtake that one instead.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Mr. Vero said. “The metal will just keep growing. It will just take over your fake school and your old one.”
“You have that astral-stuff in there,” Lily pointed out.
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean anything. That might not do anything at all.”
“Come on, Mr. Vero. You’re smarter than this!” Lily begged. “For everyone else, that astral-spell made it difficult for the metal to cling onto them. I’m sure the metal will want to search out something else that it can cling onto if it has a hard time clinging onto the school. Help me! Think! Soul magick! Do you think the metal has a soul or soul essence? I would think so, right? Since almost everything does. Why can’t we try to do a type of soul transfer—but with the metal? We can get it to leave that school and move to a fake one.”
“A soul transfer is not a thing, Pathon. Not exactly.”
“How isn’t it?” Namu spoke up. “Isn’t that what we basically do? When combining souls with mine to try to fill up my holes? Isn’t that what we did with that tree?”
Mr. Vero sighed and shook his head. “But to do that to something fake, it wouldn’t connect or even latch.”
“Nothing is fake, Mr. Vero! You should know that! Nothing is fake if it can be conjured up in the mind as real!”
“Fine. Let’s say that we can somehow do that. How would we get the metal to only attack that? And what purpose would that be for? What are we supposed to do with it afterward?”
“What purpose would that be for?” Lily asked. “To trap it so we can collect it and put it back.”
Namu looked to Koz. “And as for how to get the metal to only attack that, we can use that app Koz made. We can ask all the students to stay in the middle of the fake school with their phones and bait it. We can have them plan for it to destroy the metal, and then it will make the techno-metal disintegrate. It will cause the chaos to grow and maybe to head toward them. Like calls to like!”
“And risk the students’ lives?”
“Not if the fake school is like a shell and the students are like the new soul, like the empty vessel folding in on itself to hide so the metal can’t get to them.”
Something sparked in Mr. Vero. “A shell!”
“Isn’t this school known for runes and symbols?” Lily asked. “What could you do with a shell altogether with combined magicks?” Lily was on to something.
“Many things,” Mr. Vero said enthusiastically. “Many, many things. A shell is a type of shield.”
“Exactly,” Lily said. “And if all the teachers did a shield spell with a collective incentive—”
“Then we can trap the metal, work to put it back, and close the door.”
He turned and yelled for the other teachers to join them.
***
They were lucky that the teachers were resourceful, and that there were so many different kinds of teachers in the one school. Maybe Mr. Vero was right that putting the door in the school had been smart. Except, like Mr. Vero told them all, the real test would be to see if the school could hold up. If the school’s old soul, created by Freya’s essence, could help them fight off the metal if they loosened it for it. They had already given the school the drink. Now they would have to provide it with the means and a reason to fight.
Mrs. Heard had been handing out bags of her religious materials and praying during this time. She dug into a few bags and grabbed a horn that looked like the one in the statue of Heimdallr in the courtyard.
Namu remembered seeing Mrs. Heard change the terrain of the courtyard once last year to something very odd, like ice during a heated day. This time, she went over and turned the courtyard terrain to lava stone with a blow of the horn. A black canvas. The teachers started setting up their supplies and began drawing symbols suspended in the air. The lava stone would make the symbols and runes last longer and expand the spells instead of condensing them like when the students used some other terrains. This one was only to be used by the teachers. They planned to blast their symbols and spells to the fake school that they would create in the grass in front of the old one.
The teachers picked out a few select students to help with the more challenging parts of the spells that had to be cast. They set those students up around the courtyard and also around where the fake school would be that they had lined out.
The metal was starting to grow along the grass outside the school, now reaching for the sidewalk carrying the green dust with it. They had to be quick if they were going to succeed.
Many students didn’t know what was happening. Namu heard some teachers explaining to some of them, but then others were telling the majority of students that this was all a test or a drill, but a dangerous one. They then asked for volunteers. Many students seemed hesitant at first, until an older group with a serious demeanor about them said they would do whatever anyone needed. Then a few younger students joined, although half of the younger students decided to stand off to the side and observe.
After Namu had explained to Mr. Vero how the app had worked in that world, he said that the students had to stand in the middle of the fake school with their phones, which is why he wanted them to volunteer. There had to be a big enough incentive for them to want the metal destroyed, and it sounded as though Namu’s phone had glitched when he had used it. They didn’t know whether the phones would actually work if the students stepped away from them like Namu had in that world and hold their incentive. That was what all of this banked on: the giant spell put into place twenty-three years ago that affected the whole world and made it so anything thought to be a weapon that could kill would disintegrate and feed into the world that had escaped from the door.
Molly, Ova, and Rem were set up inside where the fake school would be with the other students who had volunteered. Their phones were opened and at the ready. Koz, during the set-up, had gone into his database and automatically put the app into each phone he had worked on in the past to make those coins. The students only had to open the app and press the button to start creating their own coins that would hopefully draw the metal to them. Not just because like-called-to-like but because with this many students thinking of the coins as a weapon, the metal would hopefully take notice and want to devour to grow more.
Lily and Namu were on one of the stations on the outside, prepared to do the visionary magick mixed with gnome. Namu was to work on visionary magick, since it was easier, along with a few other students, while Lily and others would do gnome magick. All Namu knew about gnome magick was that it was all about the mind and how it made others feel. The problem with visionary magick at this large of a scale, though, would be getting everyone to envision the same thing, which is where the teachers came in. One would flash an image from a courtyard spell that would hold a vision of what they needed to envision in their own minds for a few seconds in front of them. It would still be hard, though, since everyone perceived things in different ways. No matter what they did, he knew the “new” school would be weak.
Namu bent down and tore out some grass, ready to write whatever symbol he needed to suspend what he saw and bring it to light so others could see it too. The gnome magick would come in to make it feel and look more real. There was already a barrier spell around the students inside the school to protect them, just in case.
An outline vision of the school flashed. It was a small visual, which made it easier to hold in his mind. Namu wrote the symbol and tried to keep what he saw in his mind, wanting it to stay right where he had seen it flash moments ago.
It came to life. When he blinked and blinked again, the vision he had made would not go away, but the vision of the school was like a distorted mirage. It wasn’t structured right. The part of him that loved construction could see all its flaws, the weaknesses that made it look as though it would fall. He could only hope it would work.
Lily drew their finger up their leg next to him and then drew a symbol on their thigh. The outline of the building flashed, and then stone started to grow where the illusionary stone had been. Namu saw that, like their visionary magick, the gnome magick was flawed because of the momentary phantasm that kept flickering, allowing him to see the students inside the school before they vanished from view again. But they had done a good job regardless. The new school looked real.
Some of the students in the middle started to push the buttons on their apps. Silver and gold coins began falling onto the ground but did not last very long before they disappeared. Some students focused harder on the old school, but some looked like they thought what they were doing was useless, and Namu could tell they were giving up. It took another minute until some of the coins started turning black before instantly disintegrating to green dust. When that happened, a few students dropped their phones, the coins flying all over the place, hitting some students on their heads, but thankfully leaving no marks.
Namu was surprised that the app seemed to be working because the metal was growing toward the new smaller school. It was reaching for it, crawling along the ground. Namu and Lily backed away along with the others. His heart was in his throat as the metal climbed the fake walls.
But the school fake school held. The barrier held. Namu just wanted the teachers to act fast. He could tell that the spell’s structure and the school they had conjured up was frail.
He looked over to the teachers. Some surrounded the original school, drawing out some essence from it. Some were shooting spells from the courtyard to the growing metal now enclosing the new school.
But then Namu noticed that parts of the metal were slipping through invisible cracks. It was starting to break through the walls of the new school. With one more push, it broke all the way through. Like a wave, this giant mass of metal was traveling down to the barrier protecting the students.
Namu ran for them, but Lily grabbed his shoulder, stopping him, making him fall. Something he couldn’t quite make out appeared out of an astral mist and threw up a spell stopping some of the metal that was working on breaking through the barrier at the students’ feet. There was now metal crawling at them from the ground all around them. That thing from the astral mist disappeared as more students screamed from the other side. They all scooted in closer to each other. Namu got up and ran over to that side and saw the same thing happening again. Something was stalling the metal. Something was giving the students more time.
But then the barrier holding the growing burning metal away from the students started caving in. A few more spells blasted at the barrier, trying to hold it up as the students screamed.
They shouldn’t have done this. They shouldn’t have risked any more lives.
The coins started dying out. Namu realized it was because most of the students could only think about their upcoming deaths. They didn’t want to hurt the metal anymore. They only wanted it to not hurt them.
“Namu, look!”
He did. The real school was almost all clear, while the fake school had almost completely been consumed, but the spells the teachers had in place were failing at keeping the mass of metal from crushing the students. Was this how it was going to end? By crushing all the students with a mass of burning metal?
They had to do something. Why weren’t the teachers making the shield? The shield would be able to catch all, reflect all, do anything they wanted it to do because it was one of the most corporeal things that held incentive when it came to magick! Namu knew that the metal was surrounding the students on all sides, but why wasn’t someone making a path to run in there and get them out?
There was one last scream before the barrier completely splintered, and all the metal fell to the ground.
Namu fell to his knees.
But then he saw something flicker on the ground. It was a light. A shell. The rounded oval that the metal was now stuck to. It had come way too late.
Namu watched. All the teachers’ faces were pale, lost, broken. The shield flashed golden three times. He didn’t want it now. It was too late. He didn’t want it to take all the metal away. He didn’t want to see the smashed bodies underneath that he knew were there. That he knew was his fault they had died.
The shield shaped like a shell started lifting. It was easy to control by more than one person. A shield was always meant to do the same things: to cover, to protect, to reflect, or repel. Some of the teachers came running and wrote symbols on the ground that condensed the giant shield to trap the metal to it.
The other teachers rushed to attend to the students if any were still alive.
But where they had been was a giant hole in the ground. Not from the giant mass of metal crushing them but from what looked like a creature. On the side of the hole something was crawling out, panting and sniffing, with a small pink pointed nose and giant flattened hands with five long yellow nails. It took Namu a moment to realize that the creature had the bottom half of a person. A boy.
***
Apparently, that boy had dug the hole. Apparently, he had drunk some kind of transformation drink, turned into a half-mole creature, and had dug a large enough hole in time for the students to crouch down inside. His name was Derrin.
Namu walked with Mr. Vero through the real school now, alongside a metal floating band that looked like a cloud suspended in the air that they knew would lead to the door. They had left the other teachers and the students behind. The school was still filled with green dust that they would have to flash light through once they fixed and closed the door that would now hopefully hold.
After that, the teachers planned to use the continually growing metal that kept expanding onto the shield from the metal cloud to hurt or destroy something. That way, it would all disintegrate and go back through the door once Mr. Vero would give the word that it was closed.
At least they had control of it now.
They made it to his room. All the metal up the stairwell and down Namu’s hall was gone, along with the rubber carpet and the metal sheets that had gone through his door, almost knocking it off the hinges. His room was back to normal, and the wall was still open with the small dresser toppled over on its side. Was that how to get it to not move back to the wall?
They entered that other room. That was where most of the air-born metal started as trickles in the air, where the door still lay on the floor before the trickles turned into that metal band that led to the shield. Mr. Vero and Namu picked up the door together, Namu avoiding the handle this time. Even though it had never burned him previously, now it made his side throb. They fit it back into the opening where the green dust floated through.
The hinges clung to each other and turned darker than black for a moment, burning hot. Namu knew it was from the heat. They pushed it to make sure it was closed entirely for good measure.
“What a scare,” Mr. Vero commented as they walked up the stairwell and down his hall to his room. Namu wondered what the teachers were doing now to get rid of the metal mass, which must have stopped growing since they had shut the door. After they got rid of the metal, he knew it would be just as taxing, if not more so, to try to get rid of the shield that they had all built together. It had so many combined magickal energies that it would take a while to disintegrate and was too powerful to keep around. It could easily be used for something else if anyone with more powerful intentions got hold of it and wanted to do harm with it. He imagined most of the teachers would be up all night and there would be no school tomorrow.
Now, Mr. Vero and Namu’s job was to release the creatures that Mr. Vero had captured back through the door.
Namu thought about the kid now passed out, free of being a statue. They hadn’t been able to attend to him yet. The nurse had been sent to him, though. They had to close the door first and then release the creatures before they could speak with him.
“I’m sorry,” Namu said. Not just to the kid and everyone else in his mind but to Mr. Vero too.
“You know what,” Mr. Vero said. “I used to be sorry too when I had made my mistakes. I still am. I honestly feel sorry for you because you will always carry it with you.”
Namu didn’t say anything. He knew he would. He was lucky no one had died today, unlike the students who had died when Mr. Vero had made his mistake when it came to the door.
Mr. Vero filled the silence. “But you came up with a decent idea.”
“It almost got those students killed.”
“One student saved them all.”
“What if he hadn’t been there?”
“Maybe someone else would have.”
Namu shook his head. “I’m just tired.” He was tired of feeling empty, angry, and upset at himself.
They reached Mr. Vero’s room and went inside. On the desk was a cage almost as large as the desk containing those squealing white creatures. Namu hadn’t known they even made noises. In that other world, they had seemed so content.
“Can’t we just get rid of them some other way? For good?”
“And throw off the balance of that world again? We know nothing about these creatures. They may be there for a reason, and that is their home. Help me lift this.” Mr. Vero grabbed one side of the cage. Namu’s hands shook when he went to pick up the other side, and was surprised to see that his fingers did not go through to where the creatures could touch them. There was a barrier spell placed around it. That was when he noticed the runes placed inside the cage.
“I know they hurt you, Namu, but like you, they were just doing what they know best. Just like you were doing your best in trying to protect the students here at this school.”
Namu hated being compared to those creatures as they walked with the cage. But he kept staring at the creatures and their many eyes on their many heads as they tried to maintain some balance and clung to the cage walls. They reminded Namu of himself: just clinging on as life dragged him from one place to another.
They returned down one hall to Namu’s room right under Mr. Vero’s. They set the cage to the side, opened that door, and then scooted the cage to the opening. Then Mr. Vero did a spell so the creatures could be released.
“Did you get that other one?” Namu asked, watching them go. He didn’t know now if he truly hated that world or those creatures anymore. He didn’t know if he could actually hate them. Not if he thought of those creatures as something like him. Something placed here to do the best they could, until something like him had to ruin their plans, just like they had done for him. They were similar in many ways, it would seem.
“Once we clean everything up, I’ll catch it and send it back like the others,” Mr. Vero said, and patted Namu on the shoulder.