Warning: body horror so if that squicks you skip this…entire chapter.
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Nicholas wakes up in the middle of the night to Luca calling his name and blearily puts on his glasses, squinting at the white blur outside the crack in the door.
Too tall. Arms too long. Pinpricks of light for eyes.
Nicholas shrinks back into the mattress, a nauseous feeling rising up. "Wei?" he calls hesitantly. "Wei, are you awake?"
"Niiiiickkkky," Luca's voice says. "I ha-ave a presssent-t."
"It's not my birthday," Nicholas tries. "I think it's Haochen's, go give it to him."
There's a stuttering gasp, wet and gurgled, then a blink and the figure is gone.
Nicholas grabs his apprentice wand just out of instinct and flips off the blanket, leaping across the gap to land on Wei's bed because he is freaking the fuck out, only to scream.
Wei is lying on his side facing away, facing the bubbling tentacle creeping up from the crack between the bed and the wall, the end splayed open and covering Wei's mouth. Wei's eyes are open, wide, staring up at Nicholas as he lies paralysed from the poison.
Nicholas is still screaming as he severs the tentacle and vanishes it before casting a stomach pumping medical spell, meant to be used for alcohol poisoning.
Wei throws up as the tentacle flails and slithers back down.
"Wei!" Nicholas cries, fumbling through several spells for everything from poison purging to a simple energy burst because Wei is clearly struggling to push himself up, movements flailing and weak. "Wei, fuck, ma hadha allaena-"
Nicholas turns and sees a face staring out at him from under his bed, tilted sideways and bleached white with twitching fingers for hair and three rows of teeth as its circular mouth opens wide like a leech.
Wei surges up, grabs his wand from the table and throws them both off the end of the bed. His eyes snap to the face in the dark space underneath and he flicks his wand, Nicholas' entire bed slamming up into the ceiling and cracking the plaster from how strong the spell is.
The face is connected to a fleshy, deflated body sprawled out over the ground and Wei transfigures the bottom of the bed to spikes before it rams back down and pierces through the creature.
Nicholas frantically does the same to Wei's bed except when it lifts, the mass of tentacles is sticking to the underside and Nicholas panics, flinging the entire thing out of the window with a crash of glass and crack of the wooden frame.
Wei casts two spells out of the now shattered window, one grease and the other a flame and the bed, with its occupant, bursts into a raging bonfire so violently Wei and Nicholas lean back from the heat that washes over them.
The door slams open and Luca stands there, splattered in blood. "Dad! Nicholas, you're okay."
"No I'm fucking not!" Nicholas screams back.
Wei wheezes, dragging himself up and aiming his wand out of the window at the elongated figure now standing there, the one Nicholas saw from the doorway. It's too tall to actually look through the window, the top of the frame cutting off anything above jagged collarbones and arms stretching below the bottom windowsill.
It slowly starts to tilt, to see inside.
"No, no, mustahil!" Nicholas shrieks, grabbing Wei in one hand and Luca in the other before running out of the room and barrelling down the hallway.
Wei is staggering because he hasn't recovered, and Luca is tripping slightly because he's looking back over his shoulder. Nicholas kicks open Haochen's door and the edges come away stringy like melted cheese.
Haochen jerks up with his focus beads clicking in his tight grip and Nicholas leaps onto the bed, grabbing Haochen around the middle and tucking his legs in because the space under the bed is fucking terrifying. "The face was - and the thing standing outside, it's outside - it's chasing us-!"
Luca jumps onto the foot of the bed, tumbling over Haochen's legs. "A nest - the whole ceiling was covered, looked like children but they moved like - like-!"
Wei scrambles up onto the mattress beside Haochen's pillow in a crouch, clutching the man’s shoulder. "I was - it paralysed me - I was asleep and then just, it was, it was-!"
Haochen, even snapped awake, is not slow. He very quickly comes to the conclusion that his wards are down since the children got in, and that they were clearly using spells and that should have woken him up even if it was three rooms down.
Haochen also realises his room is smaller than it was before. He mutters a spell and the illusion peels away to reveal heaving walls, ceiling, the floor, pinkish red and pulsing through with veins of vascularized, bright red blood, sticky and dripping with something viscous.
It was trying to digest Haochen while he slept.
Haochen sighs.
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So after Haochen demonstrates what a high mage can do with a simple but overpowered blasting hex at the walls, the four of them rush from the gaping hole on the manor’s side as deformed monsters spill out after them, the room crunching down on its fellow nightmares just as Nicholas is dragged out of the wreckage Haochen left.
Nicholas tries to veer them off back towards the safety of an enclosed space but the windows and doors all slam open and then the things are pouring out of every orifice on the manor.
Wei decides to get rid of the mid-sized manor entirely in an effort to reach the source of the monsters as efficiently as physically possible. Nicholas doesn’t remember how that happened in much detail, he was too busy screaming after the monsters started crawling out of the ground instead. The manor has looked empty ever since they stepped foot into it but if there was anyone in the manor, they are now smeared on the ground.
With the building literally just gone now, and more Rorschach’s blot demons circling them, the four take off into the trees to get some room to assess. They don’t have a single second of pause though because there are things chasing them while they run through the thicket of trees, blurring between trees, silent, watching.
The four are just spinning in circles because there's a barrier line and Haochen made a transportation talisman but it doesn't work and Wei can port but only to the place he just left from. Luca can't attack the barrier with all his spells just flying right past and Nicholas doesn't even try as Rito because that would leave Luca alone.
They don't have anything but their pyjamas and focuses, a protective barrier flicked onto their bare feet because transfiguring shoes would take long enough that the creatures would catch up.
Nicholas and Wei are running at the front, clutching each other's sleeves because Nicholas is terrified of being alone and Wei is clinging right back because he always keeps a backup plan. Wei is also absolutely giving zero fucks about pretending to be a good boy and is wielding killing blows with great precision.
Nicholas is panicking and has just descended into absolute chaos because his brain has stopped. He sticks two creatures together literally face to face, sinks another up to their head in the ground, summons creatures when a tree is between them so they go slamming into the bark, shrinks a few into ankle-height goblins, and transfigures one into fish that flops sadly in the dirt.
Luca is running slightly behind and bobbing back and forth between just straight up destroying anything that gets too close to Nicholas or just casting mild stunning spells because he doesn't know what these things are, and he doesn't want to kill them, but he doesn't want them to get close enough to be fatal to Nicholas either.
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Haochen is at the back, slowed because he's testing the creatures. He's throwing out cutting hexes and blasting curses, tripping jinxes, observing if the creatures have bones to break, blood to spill, if they have an immunity to spells that target the mind or soul.
Luca raises his wand to shield Nicholas and Wei from a creature that reaches down from a tree overhead but Haochen's offensive spell collides with his and it connects their focuses in a stream of light, the spells blending, amplified with matching souls. The shield is a powerful, almost physical barrier, and collides with the creature like a bug zapper dialled up to eleven. The thing damn near disintegrates.
"Why are you so strange?" Haochen snaps.
"You're a part of this problem too!" Luca screams back because he's not taking any shit right now.
Haochen just hurls the next creature away with a burst of focusless magic, straight through a tree.
"Are you a high mage or aren't you?" Luca complains, gasping for breath. "Fucking deal with this already!"
"I'm thinking," Haochen barks back, sweat sticking some locks of hair to his temples.
"Duō xiǎng ba!" Wei yells over his shoulder, clearly agreeing with Luca, and surprisingly loud for how breathless he is.
"I've never been interested in illusionary magics!" Haochen admits in frustration. "I can't remember enough of the book I read it in." With his mastery of the mind arts, everything is sorted very neatly in his mind but he doesn't have an edict memory, things have faded.
Haochen scowls and he has no expectation the children will know but explains to them anyway to help himself think. "It's a glamour ward, closed because there's an end barrier keeping us in. The creatures are part of the insidious inner rune chain, they're reality-based illusions so they can hurt you but if we kill them they just reform."
Luca jumps over a hand reaching out of the ground amd staggers with fatigue because that earlier ambush took it out of him. "Did you read this before or after Wei?"
"I have no recollection whatsoever," Wei grits out through tired panting, setting a nearby creature on fire.
"Oh, we used that for a joke once," Nicholas says with a nervous laugh, terrified but not actually tired because this is like a nice warm up jog for him. "An open ward instead. Changed everyone's uniform to ballgowns. Raffy looks really good in a hoop skirt."
Haochen skids to a stop and a ring of fire bursts from his open palm, throwing back the creatures and burning a massive ring into the thin forest. Nicholas goes sailing back through the air, Wei half dragged along before the pull rips them apart and Wei tumbles to the ground.
Nicholas comes to a sudden halt mid-air with his feet dangling and Haochen grabs his chin to keep him still. Nicholas throws up mind shields just purely on instinct and Haochen ploughs right through, flipping around until he finds Nicholas and three other InCore boys sitting on the grass near the lake, sketching out an idea on how to get back at the teachers for trying to separate the boys for the field trip this year.
Nicholas is the one planning the runes with the raccoon, the werewolf and the Lambros are the ones to sketch out the glamour ward the runes will be set into. Nicholas knows nothing of the full ward but Haochen catches onto a thread of thought about calling Stavros, which becomes calling Christos, and follows it along to the mirror Nicholas knows Luca carries.
"Call Lambros on the mirror, the book is Glamours and White Lies by H.R. Elmat," Haochen demands of Luca and drops Nicholas, summoning the three children into a protective silver bubble and bursting into dark mist himself, sailing straight up where the bubble follows just as the creatures leap from the tree tops over the ring of fire.
Nicholas groans weakly in pain where he's flopped at the bottom of the silver sphere, starbursts of white clouding his vision even when he closes his eyes. Luca on his knees over Nicholas' torso and trying not to crush him even as Luca digs for his mirror in his pyjama pants, struggling between being upset at Haochen for hurting Nicholas and waiting to accuse him after they're not being chased.
"What's the mist spell?" Wei demands, legs tangled up with Nicholas' and half falling into Luca's shoulder.
"Determination and deliberation," Haochen's voice echoes from the mist that circles the bubble, firing off spells at the gathering crowd below. "No destination necessary."
"Are you talking about learning how to port?" Nicholas says, blinking blearily.
Wei diffuses slowly into mist before solidifying again, another two tries and he's in the air, pushing against the top of the sphere before his hands stick out, scrambling at the walls as he drops suddenly, then takes off again in a more stable form.
Luca and Nicholas stare because Wei just learned a spell in seven seconds flat and that is not something a normal person does.
Haochen allows Wei passage through the sphere and Wei bursts forth, spiralling down and massacring all the creatures below in large-scale, violent bursts of magic because he is tired and sick and grossed out and so done. He shreds through trees and flesh alike, carving huge furrows into the ground and lighting up the night sky with the blaze of his fire.
Luca's head snaps down when the mirror shakes slightly.
Christos makes a grumbling noise. "Luca? You okay?" He squints and sees spell fire being thrown around behind Luca, past the light silver sheen. "Ugh, who's trying to kill you now?"
"Find a book, Glamours and White Lies by H.R. Elmat, Nicholas said you used it before to change everyone's uniforms to dresses," Luca blurts out in a rush. "We're stuck in a glamour ward, find the book as fast as you can. Glamours and White Lies by H.R. Elmat."
"It's a closed ward," Haochen calls out. "It has to be the counter for a closed. Get a rune dictionary too, one that has insidious sigils."
Luca repeats the order as the mirror view is shaking rapidly because Christos jumps out of bed and darts through his house.
Luca drops the mirror on Nicholas' chest and tries a simple knockback jinx. It isn't reflected back inside the sphere so he starts throwing down spells as well from inside.
Every so often Haochen will release a devastating spell that obliterates everything below like a tidal wave -the manor is already nothing but a crater and the earth is scorched- but the creatures only reappear faster and multiply quicker until it's a surging moshpit of too many limbs below and they start to form a human pyramid, clawing at each other to reach the mages in the air. The high mage doesn’t have time for anything more complex because there’s just never a break in the waves.
It takes five minutes for the creatures to develop flying capabilities because reality-based glamours suck.
It also takes five minutes for Christos to port to the Lambros Ancestral House and slam open the front door because he's still blood and it can't bar him. He walks straight past his young mother and into the library where he summons a few books with a simple seeking charm, then walks back out past a still frozen Acantha and teleports away.
Nicholas laughs as he watches this through the swaying mirror in Christos’ hand, just barely catching Acantha’s dazed shock. "The sheer balls on you!"
Christos winks at the mirror with a smirk as he kicks his own front door shut behind him, dropping several books on the ground then drops to his knees too, grabbing the main book and starts frantically flipping through it until he finds a double page spread of a complicated octagonal ward. "Found it!" He grabs the mirror and holds it over the book, trying to be as steady as possible.
"He found it!" Nicholas calls out to everyone and startles when a hand phases through the sphere over his shoulder and snatches the mirror away.
Haochen solidifies standing on top of the silver orb, mirror in one hand, murmuring under his breath and he draws deep purple lines in the air with his finger. He cuts some parts out with sharp flicks of his wrist, the untethered magic fading into nothing while Haochen refills in the empty lines. He writes in western runes because that’s what language the ward is in but a few times he instinctually gets halfway through an eastern talisman sigil and has to rip it out.
With their powerhouse distracted, Luca and Wei are frantically trying to keep up while not interfering with each other's hits, syncing and falling out rapidly until they're perfectly in rhythm as they blast the creatures back - aiming mostly for wings that are stretched out eyes, or feathers made of tongues, occasionally a bloated stomach that seems to be keeping a creature afloat.
"I need something more," Haochen hisses, eyebrows furrowed in frustration even as one of Luca's spells sails past close enough to ruffle his hair. "Find me a north stability rune for out-of-plane bending."
Christos, flipping through the rune dictionary with his other hand for insidious sigils, starts rapidly flipping backward because saw that somewhere. "Here, Mannaz and Inguz."
The mirror view switches and Haochen tsks. "No, I need an amplifier to use Mannaz."
"Teiwaz behind a reverse Raido," Wei argues.
"That's not a stabiliser, it's an in-plane bend," Haochen snaps.
"It corrects the out-of-plane," Wei snarls.
"Dagaz in the south to anchor it," Nicholas tries.
"Oh, that's going to hurt," Haochen mutters but finishes the octagonal ward.
The deep purple lines pulse and flex, splitting into three-dimensional lines before bulking out into complicated glowing runes surrounded by shadowy shapes of pyramids and cubes shoved together in angles it should not be able to form, in increasingly complex ways as it grows.
Haochen throws Wei back into the silver protective orb and then just drops inside himself.
The blast wave hits.
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The waitress gives them a sideways glance as she drops off another jug of table water. Understandable, since they're all in pyjamas, barefoot, covered in dirt and leaves, some blood.
Haochen has slumped down in the booth, head tipped back onto the backrest with a conjured wet towel over his closed eyes, hair loose and three empty cups of coffee in front of him. Wei opposite is slumped forward, elbows on the table and just staring down into his pancakes.
Luca is sitting beside Wei, slowly chewing toast, eyes fluttering shut and head bobbing up and down as he tries to stay awake. Opposite Luca and next to Haochen is Nicholas, cheerfully sipping his milkshake and halfway through his bacon and eggs already.
"And I'm still screaming by this point," Nicholas is telling the mirror behind a privacy ward. "Which, like, is basically my defence mechanism because it called Luca into the room."
Christos is sprawled over the floor where he discarded the books, managing to stay awake -though certainly not as preppy as Nicholas- because he at least got some sleep and didn't need to sprint around madly for nearly an hour while throwing around spells, currently nibbling on biscuits and just enjoying being with Nicholas.
"And then the weird tall person is standing at the broken window," Nicholas continues. "So I just grab Luca and Xiao Wei and run to A’Hao’s room - and may I just say, he got it easy compared to the shit we went through."
"You got that right," Wei mutters, not even flinching at the pet name for not just himself but also Haochen.
Luca mumbles something and finally loses the battle, sliding sideways until he falls asleep on Wei's shoulder.