Page 20 of Bonds of Blood
A whiff of car exhaust prickled at my nostrils, paired with the distant rumble of city traffic. The last rift opened. Out flew Scruffles the cat. It was the suggestion of a cat, at least, a hissing, spitting orange tornado of claws and teeth. His furious yowls echoed throughout the chamber, the sound of them only damped by his victims’ howls of pain. I’d seen anger in the eyes of the creatures from the oriel, but this was the first I’d seen them show true fear.
And then I saw something else. There it was, snaking out of the corner of my eye. Something serpentine, something green. Impossible. More of the emerald tendrils crept slowly out of the three remaining oriels, emerging through these openings between worlds, probing at the stained glass. Within seconds, all four were wrapped in Baylor’s chains.
I knew it couldn’t be that easy.
11
What the hellwas Baylor up to? Dominating a single oriel wasn’t enough. Now he wanted to harness all four of them, too. He was wading into uncharted waters. What was even supposed to happen with all the oriels under his rule?
But I knew one thing for sure. This was looking very, very bad for the Wispwood. Four oriels spilling out monsters all at once? Gods above and below. The headmasters needed to know, and fast.
I couldn’t disengage from the fight, risking the safety of both Sylvain and my mother by running straight down the staircase to warn them. That was the thing about summoners, or at least my ties to the minor eidolons. We still needed to occupy the same general space. If I left the fight, the eidolons would leave with me.
So I did the next best thing. I cast a pall of protection over myself, a silvery-white shield of essence in case any stray hits got through. Then I turned around, ran up to the closest triptych of headmaster portraits, and yelled straight in their frozen oil-painted faces. The eyes on Headmaster Belladonna’s face turned completely black. She heard me, all right.
Within the next ten minutes several more students filed into the Spire of Radiance, led by Dr. Euclidea Fang and all three of the headmasters. The other oriels hadn’t yet begun to spill out their own elemental creatures, but I knew that it was only a matter of time.
“How is this even possible?” Headmaster Belladonna paced up and down the chamber, eyes boring into the oriels. “Taking hold of one of the oriels was dangerous enough. Baylor Wilde, you arrogant fool. You’ll get us all killed.”
I’d never seen Cornelius Butterworth so angry, his voice and expression so still when everything about him was normally so jovial. “This is a grave matter that needs attending to immediately. There’s nothing for it. We must delve into the oriels, kill this corruption at the root.”
Seeing the anger and desperation of the headmasters was disturbing enough. I didn’t dare ask what I already knew was on all our minds. The headmasters being so alarmed that someone had seized all the oriels suggested a terrifying truth: that they never even knew it was possible in the first place.
It should have frightened me, looking upon our leaders and realizing that they were just as frail and lost as the rest of us. But wasn’t that how we’d always survived and thrived at the Wispwood? Through cooperation and unity, by propping each other up as we reached for greater heights of truth and enlightenment.
Looking at Belladonna Praxis, though, I could sense that her proposed solution involved something a little less elegant. Something involving hitting the bad guy in the face with a blunt object.
“We must enter the oriels,” Belladonna said, her gaze cutting across the room. “Seek out the source of the blight. Crush it. Baylor Wilde’s dangerous actions cannot be allowed to go unchecked. Or unpunished.”
“Agreed,” said Headmaster Shivers. “I suggest we split our forces, tackle the oriels based on our individual strengths. Lochlann Wilde? I imagine you would be most interested in confronting your father in the Oriel of Earth.”
I glanced at the stained glass of the oriel. The ancient tree depicted on the window seemed so much older, the deep green of the leaves somehow faded, as if wilting.
“With apologies, headmaster, I don’t think we’ll find him that easily. It’s entirely possible that he’s threaded his way to the other oriels. How else could he have claimed them for himself? In any case, if we do run into him? I’m more than happy to rearrange his face.”
Headmaster Shivers nodded slowly, expressing body language despite their lack of a functional head. “Excellent. Marina Wilde, I would be most honored to travel with you into the Oriel of Water. You and I are uniquely equipped to tackle the dimension’s, ah, challenging environment.”
Mom nodded, squeezing my hand for encouragement before stepping up to the headmaster’s side. “And we would be thrilled to take along any among you who are accustomed to working with water.”
A squad of students gathered around them, sorting themselves neatly by filing in front of the oriels. We at the Wispwood had a reputation for being overly relaxed tree-hugging hippies, but when it came time to organize, we knew exactly what had to be done.
Tracing her fingers in the air, leaving trails of light with her gestures, Headmaster Belladonna stood at a point equidistant between the four oriels. Her spell was the only thing stopping them from vomiting their payload of elemental creatures into the spire.
The amount of arcane power necessary to keep up that barrier would be monstrous, to say the least. I knew that all the headmasters were powerful in their own way, but Belladonna Praxis wasn’t merely a force of nature. The woman defied the laws of the world itself. And there she stood, casually putting together her own squad at the same time.
“I shall enter the Oriel of Air. It goes without saying that anyone coming along must have access to some form of flight or levitation.”
A flurry of pink butterflies flew too close past my face, followed by the unmistakeable smirk and languid strut of one Evander Skink. “At your service, headmaster. Happy to leave whenever you’re ready.” He studied me from head to toe and back, pretending he hadn’t seen me. “Oh. Locke. Good luck, I guess.”
“Same to you,” I said, almost adding that, despite the state of emergency the Wispwood was in, he was still an evil, horrible twink.
Dr. Fang took point in front of the Oriel of Fire. “That leaves the hot one for me, then. Hot students only. What am I saying? You know what I mean. Nobody fragile or flammable, please.”
The issued challenge attracted more students than it had any right to. And I knew for a fact that Dr. Fang favored dragons, especially thelung, the serpentine Chinese species. She’d be right at home in a place of fire.
“Begging your pardon, Doc. We’d like to come, too.”
Somehow I’d missed them flying in, an entire platoon of castle imps led by Cutler himself. Each wielded a utensil, whether a fork or a breadknife, and every last one was wearing a tiny shirt, vest, or sweater, made by Satchel himself. I could have wept.
