Page 61 of Shattered Darkness

“Dude, careful, you don’t want your tombstone to read, died because he licked a magical object,” Cole comments.

I burst out laughing at the look of pure indignation on Maverick’s face as he turns around to look at Cole, “I’m not licking it.”

“You may as well be. You really are that close,” Jax adds with a smirk.

“Fuck off,” Mav throws back with a smirk and then adds, “This isn’t the right sort of material. I think this might be Jade, and I’m not getting any magical signature from it, so it’s not a potential for the object either.”

“It’s a good job, really. If the object does have protection spells on it, then you most likely would’ve been taken down by a little green statue,” Hunter points out, raising his eyebrow and crossing his arms over his chest.

Maverick thinks about it for a second, and his shoulders slump. He runs his hands through his hair and says, “Shit, you’re right. I’m sorry. I should have been more careful. I promise that I won’t get close to the next object that we think may be the one that’s controlling the teachers. I just got so excited that we might’ve actually found it that it seems all sense went out of the window and I ended up getting too close in order to see if we could finally end this.”

“And leave,” Jax adds, saying what Maverick didn’t but what we all knew that he meant.

I think that after all of this is said and done, we’re going to have a whole other issue that we need to deal with pretty damn quickly because although everyone has made it known that they want to leave the academy, we actually have no idea how to go about it and we’re not going to be able to find out if we can while we’re still dealing with this so it’s going to have to wait until after.

“Alright,” Cole says, refocusing everyone who’s gone quiet, “let's get back to searching. We know it’s here because Sage has said it is, and let's face it, when it comes to intuition, she’s rarely wrong.”

“Thanks, I think,” I interrupt with a smile.

Cole smirks, “You’re welcome. Now let's find this damn object and get things back to normal.”

“Yes sir,” I salute him sassily, making him chuckle.

We all split up again with renewed energy this time and start looking for the damned object, as Cole called it. I move away from where I was looking before and closer to the front of the temple. I decide to go about it methodically this time, and so I start by looking at the floor, at the base of the seats, and that sort of thing. I’m trying to be as thorough as possible because, like Cole said, I know that it’s here somewhere, I’ve just got to find it.

I don’t know how long I spend literally crawling on my hands and knees before something catches my eye at the very bottom of the wall. It's not quite the floor, but it's close enough. This part of the wall is highly decorated with a mural of some of the Gods, and it's done in small mosaic-like tiles. There’s a vast array of different colors used in it, and at the bottom, where their feet stand on grass, one of the tiles looks slightly different than the others.

At least, it does to me.

Once again, following my intuition I get closer to it. Also, as if it can sense that my focus is not on the whole but on it, I suddenly feel a wave of that evil and slimy magic, and I know for a fact that I’ve found it. I’ve found the fucking object that is controlling the teachers.

“Guys, I’ve found it,” I say, not bothering to see if they’ve heard me because I outright refuse to take my eyes off of the tiny piece of green tile just in case it does a disappearing act on me.

Knot nudges my shoulder, and Ghost chirps happily as they move up next to me, they were checking up in the ceiling of the temple, and while I thought it would’ve been unlikely that the object was up there, it could’ve been and no one else but them could’ve gotten up there to check.

“Where?” Maverick is the first to arrive after my familiars, the footsteps of the others quickly following behind him.

I point at the tiny tile that is giving me the bad vibe as I make sure that I’m super careful not to touch it or get too close, I know that it wouldn’t be good, and my stirring magic lets me know that there are spells protecting it and nasty spells too, ones that I absolutely do not want to mess with.

“Do you see that tiny green tile,” I say, hoping they can see what I’m talking about, or they’re just going to have to trust me.

“Oh shit yeah, I think I see the one you mean,” Maverick agrees.

“Yeah, that’s definitely it. I didn’t feel it before but now I can sure as hell feel the bad juju vibes,” Cole agrees with a shudder.

“No one touch it,” Hunter warns us, not that any of us were going to touch it anyway.

“If we don’t touch it, how are we going to make sure that it’s not moved again and break the spell so that it can’t control the teachers and we can finally get everything back to normal.” Jax asks.

“I don’t know,” Maverick replies honestly.

“It’s got some pretty fucking strong spells guarding it,” I say, “my magic is at least telling me that much although it’s not telling me exactly how bad they are or what they do.”

“Okay, well, at least we know for certain that it's dangerous,” Cole mutters. “Although a bit more information would’ve been more helpful. Is anyone else getting any information from it?”

Now that everyone knows exactly where it is I get up off the floor, Ghost landing on my shoulder and resting his massive head on mine while Knot sits down beside me, happy in her fox form as she presses against my leg and watches the others.

They all take turns getting reasonably close, and I feel the air stir with their individual magics as they each probe it to see if they can get any information from it.

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