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Sophie and Trom rushed to close the heavy oak door behind them, pushing against it with all their might. The hinges of the old door creaked loudly in protest as it moved, but finally they managed to close it.
On the cave floor, Fiff spotted a wooden beam that was at least 20 times her size. She flew over to it and, despite her tiny fairy frame, easily picked it up and placed it against the door.
"There! That should keep that stupid slime hydra out!" Fiff gloated and let out a sigh of relief.
Trom seemed much less happy with the situation. His frizzy troll hair was sticking out in every direction and he was gasping for air. He turned to face Sophie.
"Soph! Why couldn't we just leave that goopy monster alone!? We could have just walked past it, but oh no, you guys just had to get that chest!"
Under her left arm Sophie was holding a small treasure chest, not much bigger than a jewelry box.
"We couldn't just leave it, though! Imagine if no one ever found it again!"
Fiff cut in, still beaming excitedly. "Yeah, and besides, Sophie came up with that plan to lure the hydra away from its nest. And it worked!"
"I mean, apart from when it came back and we had to run," Sophie admitted. "But we still got away!"
"And what if we hadn't!? What if we'd been eaten by the slime hydra? Then no one would ever have found that dumb chest," Trom shot back. "You should have left it where it was!"
"Oh, relax, Trom," Fiff said. "Getting eaten by a slime hydra can't be that dangerous. Otherwise Nimum would never have brought us along to catch it."
They heard a loud crash from the other side of the oaken door, like something smashing into it. The three kids froze. The light that was always beaming from Fiff's body, and which would change color depending on her mood, now turned from a happy yellow to a worried light blue. Trom started to sweat even more from his brow than he had been.
Sophie carefully stepped closer to the door to look at it. A number of deep cracks had sprung up in the old wood, and it looked like something was still pushing against it from the other side.
"D'ya think it'll hold?" Trom asked.
"Of course it will! We're only being chased by one of the heads, after all," Fiff said, sounding confident – though the color of her light made it seem like she wasn't quite as sure.
Sophie could see green goop oozing its way through the cracks, and the hinges of the door seemed like they were almost about to blow from the pressure.
"RUN!"
The three of them ran down the long rock tunnel. Trom was muttering obscenities and gasping for air as he struggled to keep up with Sophie and Fiff.
"Mother of trolls! I hate running!"
"Maybe if you actually joined in in gym class, it wouldn't be so bad!" Fiff called back to him.
"Easy for you to say – you've got wings!"
At that moment they heard the old wooden door shatter behind them, and a green, slimy, translucent snakehead pushed its way through the doorway. Trom immediately sped up and caught up with Sophie and Fiff.
"I guess you don't need wings after all!" Fiff laughed.
"Why won't that fricking hydra just give up!?" Trom cursed.
Sophie looked back over her shoulder. The head of the slime hydra kept stretching towards them with no sign of stopping. It was just like she'd read: Because the monster's body was all made of slime, it could stretch to more than twenty times its normal size – and it was pretty big to begin with!
"It's catching up! We need to run faster!" Sophie yelled.
"I don't think I can run any faster!" Trom looked pale as a ghost and completely out of breath, like he could keel over at any moment.
"Sophie! Fiff! Trom!" Up ahead, Elva appeared. Elva was an elf girl from their class with the power to control any part of nature just by touching it. She was standing on the branch of a tree that was sprinting towards them like some kind of frenzied race horse.
Throughout the week she'd spent at her new school, Sophie had already seen Elva use her magic powers several times – but it was still hard not to stare when you saw a large tree running around on its own roots [https://img.wattpad.com/9def7347bdc363917350b5675ac83f0741ad44eb/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f7030337152644a346139467451673d3d2d313331323835313237392e313734313035353536666334393331353938353531333034383333352e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
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Throughout the week she'd spent at her new school, Sophie had already seen Elva use her magic powers several times – but it was still hard not to stare when you saw a large tree running around on its own roots.
The tree ground to a halt right in front of them, just inches before it would have trampled them.
"Hurry! Get on!"
Elva reached out a hand towards Sophie, but Sophie pushed the exhausted Trom ahead of her. Locking arms, Trom and Elva both grimaced at each other, and as soon as Trom had been pulled up on the branch they broke contact immediately. It didn't take Fiff long at all to latch onto one of the upper branches of the tree, and Sophie threw herself onto one of the lower ones. The impact blew all the air out of her, but she managed to grab on firmly.
"Hold on, everybody, we're going to max speed!" Elva yelled. The tree dashed off, while the head of the slime hydra frustratedly snapped its jaw at where they'd just been.
"Ha! That'll teach you, you dumb, oversized jelly!" Fiff taunted back at the slime hydra, while she, Sophie and Trom clung to the branches that swayed dangerously back and forth.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie could see that Fiff's color had changed again, this time to a proud and confident purple. She looked like a massive light bulb dangling wildly off her branch at the top of the tree.
In contrast, Elva seemed completely unaffected by the turbulence. She stood on her branch with a straight back, a puffed-up chest and her keen eyes locked on the exit up ahead.
"How did everyone else do?" Sophie asked.
"Oh, they're fine. You guys were the only ones who hadn't shown yet," Elva replied.
The head of the slime hydra snapped after them one final time as they made their way out, but caught nothing but air. The kids had made it out of the rock tunnel and into the secret cave behind the easternmost waterfall of Unum.
The tree kept running down the small path along the steep wall of the cliff. Several other cliff tunnels dotted the wall, with a slime hydra head poking out of each one. Way down at the bottom of the cliff wall was the biggest of all the tunnels. This one was occupied too – the massive butt of the slime hydra was still sticking out of the tunnel, fully stuck.
Some distance away from the giant butt stood the rest of the class: Beto the vampire, Mek the Gorgon, Vix the skeleton, Rok the stone giant, Varis the werewolf and their teacher, Nimum – a troll-elf and the "Seventh Daughter of Mother Earth", which was a title reserved for the most powerful magic users in the magical world. Nimum seemed to have created a massive orange flower that would have looked a lot like a tulip, if it hadn't been almost 10 feet tall.
"Nimum! I found Sophie, Fiff and Trom!" Elva yelled out towards the group.
Nimum looked up at them. "That's so rad, Elva! Hurry down here where it's safe, so I can give the big green fella a boot to the behind!"
"Got it! Hold on, everybody!"
"Hold on!?" Trom exclaimed. "That's all we've been doing since you... Aaargh!"
The tree coiled its roots and leapt off the narrow path and towards the cliff bottom. It was at least a 30 feet drop. The wind whipped into their faces and made their eyes water. The tree spread out its roots, like a massive fishing net caught in the wind, and then landed gracefully like a ballerina right next to Nimum.
Sophie was impressed. She looked over at Elva. "Have you been practicing controlling the trees, Elva? That was amazing!"
Elva had changed a lot since Sophie started going to the School of Wonders. She'd stopped being so condescending towards her classmates, she'd been much more open to working as a team, and she'd even changed how she dressed. Not in a massive way, but there was still a noticeable difference. She still wore a white dress, but both the sleeves and the hemline had been shortened, with the sleeves now reaching the middle part of her forearms and the dress reaching down to her calves. The bottom of her dress was no longer flat, but wavy. Her light blue vest had been decorated, too, and had layers added to it, which complimented the dress nicely. Around her neck, she'd added a fancy, lightish purple cravat. She'd also pulled her hair up into a braid, but purposely left three strands of hair sticking out. Finally, she'd stopped wearing shoes. Sophie wondered it that was to make it easier for her to use her powers, since she needed to be in physical contact with nature to make it obey her.
All in all, she looked a lot more like an adventurer than she had before.
Elva smiled with self-satisfaction at Sophie's compliment. "Well, you know. Just because I'm great, doesn't mean I can't get even better."
What hadn't changed at all, Sophie noted, was her pride.
"I think I'm gonna hurl," Trom said, white as a sheet.
"Put your sunglasses on, everybody!" Nimum raised both her hands towards the head of the flower, which immediately started to light up. Nimum was wearing her usual blue coat, her orange woolen hat and her pirate-like get-up. Her curly, orange hair reached her shoulders, her ears poked out to the sides, and her tail quivered with excitement.
The students pulled out the dark sunglasses that Nimum had given them all earlier in the day. That had been the big mystery of the day: What were they going to use the sunglasses for? Sophie's guess had been that there was going to be an eclipse or something similar that they were supposed to stare at. Trom had held out hope that they were all going to the beach for a day of relaxation. No one had been as sure about their guess as Varis, though.
"It's obvious! Nimum doesn't think we look stylish enough, so she bought us these awesome shades."
The rest of the class didn't quite buy Varis' theory. But of course, the first person to guess the right answer was Beto the vampire. He was the smartest kid in class – maybe even in the whole school. He figured it out as soon as he saw the slime hydra.
"Of course! She's going to conjure up a sunblaze flower," he exclaimed, as if everybody would just know what that was.
None of them did, least of all Sophie, who was from the human world and still had much to learn about the magical world.
"What's a sunblaze flower?" she asked. As always, Beto's face lit up at the chance to share something he knew.
"Allow me to explain: A sunblaze flower has the power to draw in all the light and heat around it and to shoot it all out in a concentrated beam. They're often used in very hot areas that are plagued by drought."
Just like Beto had predicted, Sophie now saw the sunblaze flower draw in all the light in the room. It shone like a tiny version of the sun, making it clear why the students had all needed their sunglasses. Nimum swung her arms forward, and a blinding beam of light shot out from the petals and hit the slime hydra's behind.
Nimum swung her arms forward, and a blinding beam of light shot out from the petals and hit the slime hydra's behind [https://img.wattpad.com/4da24ee621507146251d2ff234036b373ecebc87/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f78697548417355787163593355413d3d2d313331323835313237392e313734313035346666613338383635363934383833303531383332352e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
The students all watched as the hydra disappeared in a huge cloud of evaporating green slime and a splatter of goo.