Lethe, current "acting" dean of Dais school of magic

Gender: female

Age: around 23, younger in story

Standing: Fur and Feathers Frenzy

Dragon: none yet

Orn Boothe, administrator of Dais school

Gender: male

Age: unknown, appears mid 30s

Standing: Star City Dragonry for Xeno-Hy-Hathian Clutch

Dragon: 2 headed tan f Drone Evistora, 2 headed silver m Retalet

I paused, frozen. The Dionin hadn't seen me yet, I crouched lower beside the table. When it looked like she was about to leave the room, I held my breath. The ebony robe she wore brushed my hand, the cool material swept around, sending terror through my arm, but I didn't move.
I couldn't move.
When she'd gone from the room, I finally sighed, letting out that held breath -- how long had I been holding it? I knelt, leaned out a little, and looked over the rest of the room. Over by the south wall, two kids sat, new initiates, without their robes.
They giggled at one another, the boy was about sixteen, the girl maybe the same, probably younger. I wondered, have they been Shocked out yet? Probably not. Lethe, get a grip, I thought.
The room divider served me well, it stood with its innocuous blue pleats barely a foot away from me and the table. I sat in an uncomfortable and terribly unladylike pose, head nearly between my legs, stuffed down below the line of sight of the kids, waiting. I felt my stomach trying to gurgle.
The scent of the food on that table was driving me insane. I hadn't eaten for what, a day, more? I moved a little backwards, toward the outside door. There, behind the safety of the divider, I hazarded a taller stance. The banquet on the table was set up for the Shock staff, I guessed, heaven forbid they work on empty stomachs.
Pity this kind of treatment didn't apply to the students. Past or present.
I wondered what the kids on the couch were doing, they're quiet. They might have been there to protect the food from wandering students.
But then again, I smiled, I'm neither wandering nor a student.
It was a good thing that the Mages hadn't seen me yet. Only once, I'd heard earlier, that's how much it took to be able to track someone. So I didn't get seen. And the one who had seen me didn't know I was missing. Go girl, I prodded myself.
I reached over and took a piece of turkey. Quietly. It's all I could do not to scarf it down and gobble up some of the crab legs and breads and --
I hissed out a breath, savored the meat, and ducked back under the table when something made a sound outside. Two pairs of shoes, both black, walked quickly by me, the table, and the food. One paused, I hear them grabbing at a plate.
No, I thought, just go and leave the room.
The plate gathered food. I groaned inside. It wasn't working any more.
"Will you come on," the other person said, it was a woman, an older woman with a familiar voice. She taught English at one point, deeply in my past.
Deeply. Three years was deep now. So much has changed.
"This food is going to waste in here," the one with the food said, another woman, younger. "It should have been brought out to the courtyard. There's no harm in taking some now, we're going to be in all day."
Mrs. McKellen, my old teacher, sighed and stepped to her younger counterpart, helped herself to the food as well. I took this opportunity to sit on the floor, huddle my knees close, and eat too.
"The Dais is on," a voice called from the outside. It was that rat-bastard, Portaga. The two women set their plates down, hurried out again. Then the pair of kids on the couch did likewise, I saw their sneakers dancing beside the table, and away.
I got out from under the table and stood, hands on it, looking out the large glass door.
"Hell," I muttered. "I wonder if this door locks."

It did. I locked myself into the room, closing both doors and drawing the curtains across the glass door for a little more privacy. There I sat, dazed, finally able to eat in comfortable safe silence.
I slept a little, I suppose. When I woke, looked out the window cautiously, the sun was at a considerably lower angle.
"Shit," I said. The Shock was going to start, or perhaps it already had.
Shock. I smiled to myself, the word itself only an echo of the potential that the ceremony would dictate.
I examined the spear of broccoli I munched on, while thinking it over. What kind of place had my old school become, anyway?
When I had gone back, on some whim, it was less than two days before. I could think more clearly with food in my stomach and sleep behind me, however all I could think about was Ian.
He had been with me on the trip, we met up with some others from our class which had graduated some three (or for him, two) years before, outside the school.
It had changed. It looked bigger, it looked nastier, and had an air about it.
Not like schools usually have, that kind of air when you normally return to a place, this one had a feel of power, and not a little bit of evil mixed in. And evil was not a word I would usually apply to reality. I didn't believe in good and evil, god or satan. I still don't, but I know evil exists.
The powerful urge that all these old students had, arriving at the same time, the confused mix of people, all of us had wondered at it. Some more vocally than others.
I saw people I had lost contact with, after graduation. Several girls on the cheerleading squad now had a child gripping their hand, one even had two. I smiled to myself at that, mentioned it to Ian, who laughed.
There were gang members, Mod squads, nerds, jocks, all the old groups who aligned themselves the way people will. Ian and I walked to the middle ground, on the grassy hill beside the main entrance to the school. There, we found Thad, Tim and Sherrie, and about three others who had been with and without our clique over the years. We waited for something to happen.
We stayed out of the way of the brief knife fight that broke out between two formerly (formerly?) aggressive gangs.
The number of people arriving was impressive. I recognized people from not only my class, but the one before it, and as Ian and the rest were from, the year after. All were basically casual, wearing whatever we had chosen to leave the house, jeans, shorts, normal summer wear.
A dozen or more portable boom boxes had different radio stations playing from their speakers. We stood around, as a group, until the doors at the entrance before us opened.
Three people stood in it, the doors were those wide kind which rose to the ceiling at around twelve feet high, the hall was dark behind the people.
The radios continued to blare for about ten seconds after the doors opened, and then they just stopped. I don't know if anyone actually turned them off, they just stopped. There was silence.
We all recognized Portaga, the principal, he stood in the middle of the doorway. On each side of the aging and rather bald man were young women. Tall, dangerous looking women.
The most astonishing thing about the whole scene was what the trio were wearing. Portaga had a suit on, which could be seen from the open front of his robe. It looked like he had been practicing for a graduation ceremony or something, with that black robe. The top of the robe had a silver band all the way around it, so actually the part below his waist was black, the whole top was that metallic and shining silver. He looked quite smug.
I still hated him, I never knew what it was about him that I disliked in school, but he was just a bastard and we left it at that, me and my friends.
The women were also wearing silver-decked black, the one to his left was a black woman about my age, carefully straightened and styled black hair, with shining eyes. The outfit she wore was a dress of sorts, with very long wide-wristed sleeves, and a v-point hem. Below that she wore pants in black, striking me as odd, it was a little too warm for such things. The silver pattern on her dress followed the neckline and did a sharp 'v' almost all the way to the hem of the dress. That pattern was a wide band of dragons, brambles, arrowheads and such. It could have been an oriental design, or medieval, but it looked quite modern and sinister at that. She had something in her hand, a smallish stick. Too small to be a tonfa or nightstick, too big to be anything innocuous.
The other girl was much younger, with tan skin and orangey-dyed hair with black roots, kept away from her eyes by a silver colored tie. She too wore a dress with pants beneath it, black, her skirt was much shorter and slightly pleated, it reminded me of the kind of dance outfits sometimes worn in modern performances. The sleeves of the dress went to her elbows, but she also was wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck. The dress over it had the same kind of sinister v-shaped dragon design in silver, however hers only went to just below her rather amble breasts.
Portaga stepped forward, the girls hovered by the doors.
"Welcome back," he said, his voice carried too clearly through the midday air. Something was very odd. He smiled widely. "I'd like to introduce you to Rada and Maia," he presented the women, "they are going to escort you all inside."
As a mass, we started to laugh. What the hell was going on? many people asked out loud, then several people started to walk away.
And the women appeared behind them, with a burst of light.
And my heart rate shot up.
How had they done it? And who were the others? More girls wearing silver-dragons over black, each with a different kind of weapon in their hand, some without any but ... But to look at them was to know they were dangerous. Maia, the Mexican girl, stepped to my group, looking at us with an oddly superior gleam in her eyes.
"So this is the cream of the intellectual crop," she said harshly, and laughed. "What a damn shame. Get inside." She moved her hands, and something happened to my head. I remember walking, remember staggering along up the wide stone stairs into the halls.
Into a room I barely had time to look at -- it had been the front office at one time, but now it was so different that I had to think about it. Past there. Down a stairwell, the clattering of many feet down metal, grunts and shouts, and the noise from a sort of electrical discharge coming from Maia's hands...
We reached the basement, or at least I thought it might be, then we were led again down a long hall. Once, when I had been playing in the orchestra (for all of one semester) we'd been shuffled down here, the underground passages only barely remembered. I looked at the ceiling, being pushed along by the weight of someone else's hands, and I wondered.
Was this hell?
More of the black-robed teachers and staff, and teenagers galore, stood to the sides of a large auditorium. They were there, presumably, to keep us from leaving. Most of the girls had the dragon logos on their dresses, though I spotted a few with small diamond-shapes decorating their necklines -- they wore the graduation robes and nothing more fashionable.
I then began to wonder if all of a sudden the whole place had not been possessed by satan or been on a real bad acid trip or just what? This was very eerie, and since I had lost control of my body sometime earlier I just had to go along with it.
I didn't like it, no one did.
Then we were all inside.

A moment later, after the doors had been slammed shut, the three hundred or so of us started to panic. The general rush to the doors yielded nothing, they were sealed somehow, they didn't buckle under the weight of so many enraged people, though the rare unlucky bystander was. I took a deep breath, moved my fingers all by myself and walked closer to Ian.
We stood together, I watched his face. He had let his beard grow a little, even though he kept saying that he was going to cut it for the summer. I liked the way it framed his lips, and I liked the way his very long brown hair did the same to his eyes. He looked like Jesus. We laughed about it all the time.
I lost track of where Thad and Tim went, but I thought I heard Sherrie somewhere, probably trying to find a corner to stuff herself into. There were no corners, it was a basically round room. Huge, ceiling possibly twenty five feet high, the floor angled downward to the semi-straight wall opposite the doors. There were three sets of double doors, metal doors. They were the only permanent feature in the room. I tried to stand more carefully when I nearly tripped over a metal circle on the floor, then I looked around and realized that the whole floor had been covered in rows of seats, all of which were now gone. No, I saw a few torn up but still rooted into the ground. Below them, a former socialite clutched her daughter and sobbed.
The walls were stark, near the ceiling there were marks and tears in the paint and the plaster was chunked out here and there. There was blood on the walls, grime, oil, marks which could have been made by Maia's hands and that wild electric field she had. Stains covered the floor, there were bits of clothing and feces, and then I realized how bad it smelled.
I wanted to die. This was something out of a nazi horror flick, right? We'd been captured, and now what?
The gang members were the first to crack. Some of them were probably coming down in the first place, along with the few surfer dudes who had actually made it to this shindig. (Those three longhaired goof balls stood in the corner nearest the space where the largest of several chalk boards had once stood, they spoke in quiet terms of 'suicide' and 'bad trips'.) Four large guys muscled around trying to be the bullies they had been in school, but it was not working as well as they imagined it would.
However, they did manage to wedge themselves between Ian and myself. I held out my hand, but in the chaotic room, he couldn't reach it. Then I was moved to the other side, pressed against the wall. I kicked the one guy in the balls, his friends laughed at him, and I walked away and was not pursued. But I couldn't find Ian. I didn't bother calling out.
It was hard to stand on the sloped floor. The carpet between the rows of seats had only partially been stripped away, so tripping was always an option. People began to calm, some of them anyway, and those of us who could maintain sanity began slowly milling about with caution rather than panic.
Like several others, I could see in their faces they were speaking to themselves this way, I paced around looking at the people in the room. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to the assembly here. There were equal numbers of whites, Mexicans, blacks, Asians, everyone. People of nearly all financial castes as well, those who had enough money to go to the good local university were the same ones pacing, mainly, down to the dirt poor ones who couldn't afford child care nor birth control. Male and female. The only thing we had in common was that we had all graduated from this very same place.
We were convenient?
I heard someone swearing, their radio wasn't working, still. They hit it, started a small riot, then when it was over they went back to complaining quietly.
Convenient. I looked, those who had left town were obviously not here, but everyone else who was available had arrived. I wondered, were there latecomers gathering outside even now?
At that, I smiled. Opening those doors would mean pure chaos again, but it would also mean a chance. And the more the merrier, I figured. Statistically speaking, really, the more of us who do make a run for it increase the chances of even one of us escaping.
Escape, I thought. There's a word you don't actually have to use all the time. This isn't escaping from the nine-to-five bullshit, this isn't a fucking vacation, is it. And we won't be missed until late tonight.
Mind control. I nodded slowly, running those words through my head. Mind control had brought us all together, but mind control was television fantasy.
Then again, so was Maia and her electric cattle-prod hands. Gloves? No, they were just her hands.
I was interrupted from my thoughts by a bright flash beside the doors.
My heart sank into my feet. If they can teleport, can't they just do it to the others outside? Christ, this looked bad.
Maia stood beside a tall and handsome young man, he was probably about ten years older than me, and he had the look of a professional, I couldn't decide what career he must have been in, something told me he had abandoned it in favor of something much more interesting. He had a sharply cut black suit, his shoes shone like they had just been polished, his black hair was slicked back over his olive skin, and even inside he wore dark small circular sunglasses over his eyes which I guessed were black. The silver pattern on his suit was made up of large diamonds in rows down the front and back of the suit. I counted six repetitions, and my mind flashed to the younger one with small versions of that same pattern.
Pattern.
Emerging from my mouth would have been that very word, but I clamped it shut when I would have been heard. The man indicated Maia to step forward, which she did. This would have been a mistake, but then I couldn't move, again. No one could. As if a wall of invisible force had descended over us all, sticking us like glue.
Like bugs on a trap.
I watched the man, not trusting him. He looked at me and smiled.
I couldn't look away, I had frozen conveniently looking right at him.
"You've been gathered here to become part of an experiment," Maia began. "Willing or not, you've been selected. There will be dangers, and there will be fatalities. You'll have to learn to live with them both."
The man stepped forward himself. "I will be your escort when your times come, before then, when these doors open, do not make a move to them. You will be punished." He smiled again, looked around the room.
I could move my eyes, then. It came as a small surprise to me, but I kept it to myself. I looked back and forth between the man and the group of former students. The way he looked to the gang's girls and back to Maia made me very nervous.
He was selecting them, I could tell. For what?
To be escorted. Suddenly, he held up his hand and about seven of the ones in the front moved to his side. They turned with pleading faces to their boyfriends, who were helpless.
They couldn't even make any sounds. All they could do was breathe. But I could move, if I wanted to. Did this mean he wanted me as well?
I wasn't sure, he hadn't looked at me. I didn't feel compelled to move, that much was certain. And I wanted to wait. I wanted to talk to Ian again, if I could.
Compelled. Magically?
"Magic?" I said aloud, and at that, the man turned and faced me.
"Yes, magic," was his reply. His nostril flared and then he turned back to the other girls. Maia looked at him, significantly, but did nothing. Then the doors opened, just the pair before him.
"Orn, go quickly," Maia said. She growled, and her hands glowed with a warning to those near her. I felt something sweep over me, a completely alien sensation. I couldn't name it for the life of me, just suddenly I could sense something I had been unaware of before.
From Maia came a sheet of energy, which cloaked the assembly. She was controlling them.
And I could see it. Wondered, could anyone else now?
This was madness. I watched as the seven went out, escorted as promised by this Orn guy. Maia kept a close eye on the mass of increasingly-angry people before her. Then she backed up, disappeared from the room, and as the doors slammed shut again, the invisible sheet of energy vaporized.
It followed her. It was sucked through the space of the doors and then I saw the doors glow with that same energy. It had to be one of the other people who had lined the corridor outside doing it, the light was more steady than hers had been.
Oh, so now I was able to determine this? I shook my head and was amazed at myself, thought I must be going completely crazy, but then I kept seeing it, covering the doors with the soft light.
There would be no getting through that, I decided. So the only moment for escape could be when it was down. And maybe a large enough distraction could confuse the guards out there long enough -- if they had to defend themselves against the angry people in here, they couldn't possibly keep up the barrier as well.
I smiled. This would work, I had an advantage, one which, hopefully, hadn't been given away by my statement.
Or, I thought, by the fact that I could break through Maia's barrier. Shit.
I'd have to be very careful. I hoped fervently that unpredictable things would stop happening. Go with the flow. Go with it.
I gave in to a whim, and looked around the room with this new kind of sight of mine.
I saw two dozen or more people doing the same. We smiled to one another, as if there were nothing between us, no people, no haze of cigarette smoke. I still couldn't find Ian, he wasn't one of those with this talent.
My heart began to hurt at that. Maybe, what if he wasn't able to --
I promptly stopped thinking about that. I worked my way again from my wall to the middle of the room, looking. I continued to look but the place was madly packed, and moving as well. We could have brushed up against one another, but I sure didn't see him.
Another flash of light and we were frozen again. I stayed still, didn't move. I wasn't facing the doors though, and I really wanted to look.
I knew Orn was there again, but I wondered if it was Maia conjuring the field, it felt different. I could still move, I knew that I was... stronger than whoever was putting it out. Still, I was sure that it would be wiser of me to be sly than to give it away. When he called several names out, I recognized some of them as being those gang kids in the fight earlier.
Then I had to turn. He wasn't calling me, I just had to turn and see what he was doing. Three screams, the sound of a discharge, silence. Two more noises I'd rather forget, and then the scent of burnt human flesh.
At least their girlfriends weren't here to see this. The bodies tumbled down the floor, one stuck on the chairs but someone kicked at it until it rolled free, and they landed at the back of the room.
I swallowed hard, watching, noticed that the field was off, again. When I turned, no one was there by the doors, they were blocked.

Three more times, Orn and his attendant bimbo came in, killed a number of people, and left. The scent in the room was overwhelming, people had vomited and that started off a whole bunch more. I counted, now, of the gang members left there were five easily recognized, but they were keeping their heads. They looked deep in thought, separately, and I hoped they could find it in themselves to put aside their ridiculous differences and try that magic of all magics: cooperation. Several of the fringe Mexican girls had gone to the bodies and one had begun singing, sobbing, something possibly in Latin, I was certain that she was attempting to do some religious task.
Like it was going to help.
She was assisted by several others, soon, though. It made them feel better. Finally, grief on their part had replaced fear and anger, and they simply sat wide-eyed and near-mad beside the smoldering bodies piled against the wall.
Someone made a tasteless comment near me that they wouldn't have to light candles, because the bodies were already smoking, but fortunately not too many people heard. I wanted to silence him myself, but I couldn't see who it was.
"This is a goddamn shitty reunion," Tim said, I watched him kicking at a loose tile on the floor.
"I'll agree there," I said. "Have you seen Ian?"
He looked at me with that look he gave me often, since we broke up.
"No," he said finally. And with concern, he added, "and I haven't seen Sherrie either. Not even back by the corner." We both looked where we expected to see her, and both still did not.
"It's possible they just disappeared," I muttered. He looked up with interest, drew his hand over his ever-so-slightly balding blond curls, and watched me with those intense blue eyes of his.
"What?"
"If these people can teleport," I said, using that word for the first time outside of a fantasy game, "into the room, there isn't any reason to think they can't do it selectively to people inside, is there?" I kept my voice quiet, just in case someone heard and panicked.
"Yeah, I guess," Tim seemed unconvinced. "I think they're just probably lost in here."
"In one large room with a decreasing population, can that last?" I said, narrowing my eyes and looking right at him. "I'm worried."
"Then let's look again," he said, and we walked with our arms closely entwined, the way we used to.
There was a desperate edge to our search, by the time the next flash of light brought attention to the front of the room again, we had not seen either missing member of our group, nor Thad, Chris or Dave. To all appearances, then, we were the last left.
I contemplated that, as Tim went frozen and I turned to look at Orn again.
He smiled at me again, knowing. I hated him.
"We have more people to bring in, now," he said. "Again, if there is any doubt about how harsh your punishment will be if you attempt escape," he pointed into the center of the room, "think about them." He made my stomach turn.
Then the three sets of doors opened.
He knows I can move, I thought frantically. But does he think I'll try to get away? And then I saw the others making their move.
Now or never.
In the suitable amount of chaos while the fifty or more new people were led into the room, I managed to get out from Tim's arm, looked him in the eye seriously before leaving his side, and scuttled up the slope to the left side door.
It was the door farthest away from the entrance of the building, I realized too late.
I also realized too late that one of the dragon girls had seen me.
We looked one another over, briefly, assessed each other. She was Asian, smaller than me by a head and forty pounds, but she had a pair of samurai swords at her side. The dragons on her outfit were slender and long, slightly different than Maia's. She narrowed her eyes, sneered. She was maybe sixteen at best.
I dove back into the room, but she followed me. She knew there was a threat. Well, I was. And so was she.
I hoped she didn't take those swords out while wading through the people in the room, they were still stunned and dazed, both those who had been there, and the newcomers moved sluggishly now.
Apparently, we were testing their limits, these little magicians.
Good.
I crowd-wove, one of Ian's favorite activities, and my skill at it had been enhanced by his own, dragging me behind him at a crazy pace. It was to my advantage that I wore jeans and a T-shirt and not what this dragon had on: she was wearing a long-sleeved dress, the dress part was fashionably shredded below her waist to look impressive, but it also tended to catch on things and make her knees less mobile than mine.
I scudded to the ground, rolled, dodged between two groups of frozen people. Got up, scanned briefly, saw her heading too far behind me to have seen me get up. I headed back up to the doors, where people were still being moved in.
Excellent. There was a shifting now, the mass of prisoners had gained a little confidence when they saw me and the several others try getting out, and in the confusion at the doors half the people coming in were aware something was going on.
Orn was not watching, one of the younger mages with the small diamond patterns was making the field, I could see it wafting gently from his head.
I looked at the ground, crouching. Through the legs and feet I saw what I wanted: one of the leftover chunks of chairs that rested not too far away. I lunged for it between groups passing before me, huddled back, holding the chair leg which was splintery and hurt my hands. It had a nasty sharp end.
I estimated quickly, saw out of the corner of my eye two of the others with my talent sprinting up the hall past the guards, and then those guards letting out a shout and following them. Orn had his attention filled with the entering prisoners, he was not even facing the room any more. My little ninja dragon was nowhere to be seen, so I stood and passed between the entering folks.
Then I swung the chair leg into the mage's head.
It splintered with a satisfying crack, and sent waves of pain into my hands. I hadn't expected it to knock him out, I wanted to distract him, but he fell. As he did so, the field dissipated.
Just exactly perfect. I smiled at the nearest of the three gang leaders, and he nodded back at me, lowered his bandanna to just over his eyes, and strutted over to Orn.
I don't know what he did next. I had kept the stick and sprinted to the other side of the doors. I did a head count again, saw that the mages had their hands very full with the recovery of the room, now that their comrade was suddenly out of the picture.
Riot.
I held the dark wood close to me, and passed through the doorway. I could now feel with my hands the remnants of the magic barrier. I recognized it, it was like a bad aftertaste. The corridor was dark to my left, with all the action happening on the right, where the last few prisoners were now able to move freely and cause their own little riot. The noise level had increased to deafening, but I kept listening for Ian's voice.
I did not hear it.
I took a deep breath, looked up and down the hall, and sprinted to the left, into the darkness.

It was a damn good thing that I had been here even once before. There was an access stairwell at the end of the hall, and nothing else. My escape would not be complete until I could be alone and safe outside the school. I got through the stairwell door without it making any noise, as if it would be noticed with the din beyond? Well, it was well-lit inside, and the light did escape -- but I didn't look back. I kept my hands occupied with the stick, and now that they were numb with my clenching it I didn't notice the splinters any longer.
I think they were bleeding, I didn't care.
My mind clouded over, quickly. It wasn't someone tracking me, it happened that now that I was out of the immediate riot, and the high of the escape was fading, I had no idea what to do or where to go.
Who might see me was my main concern. I determined that the black robes were the bad guys. The silver indicated something like rank, definitely what kind of service the person was performing. Okay. I heard screams coming from the hall, echoing.
Silence soon claimed the room. I sat at the bottom of the stairs and shook.
My mind flashed to the scene in Terminator Two when Sarah Conner was running through the halls of the nuthouse, with that guy's tonfa behind her arm. She knew what she was doing.
Thanks to Chris and Dave (bless their black hearts, I thought) I did too. I more closely examined my weapon. It was balanced pretty well, straight except for the very sharp end which tapered off unevenly. I saw the clump of hair from the mage I'd hit, picked at it. Maybe I'd killed him.
Frankly, at this point, I didn't care. One of them for twenty six of us, that might be close to fair.
If I tried, I could swing the wood with one hand and not lose it or more skin. Hitting something as hard as I had before would not be easy, I guessed then that I had been quite rushed on adrenaline, and that wouldn't be back for a while.
Maybe if I could find some coffee. Or a vending machine for a Coke?
I laughed very quietly to myself: I was plotting my next sugar rush. As a serious option.
Things had gotten completely out of control. And on half an imagined nervous look up, I saw through the door that someone with some kind of magic power was heading this way.
I hurried as quietly as I could, up the stairs. I continued as far as they went, three stories. That put me on the second floor. I looked for roof access, but I didn't see a hatch or door, so I had to assume that there wasn't any from this stairwell.
Okay. There was another one on the other side of the building. In fact, if I counted the east wing, there were three, one of them from the gym hall.
Wish I'd ever taken gym seriously. Cut that class more than any other. Ah, well.
Maia had known who we were, she'd said it herself: cream of the intellectual crop. Me, Tim, Ian, my group had been in the advanced section, and we didn't pay much attention to things physical. Chris and Dave always kept us on our toes, I knew they'd survive this if anyone would. They practiced their killing arts and occasionally let the rest of us in on their exploits. I relished those days, now, and wondered if they'd be better remembered or acted upon?
I stayed in the top of the stairwell as long as an hour, just sitting and thinking. I had to pee, thought about doing it right there in the corner: who would care? There were dead roasted bodies in the basement, who the hell was going to care about a little urine in the stairwell?
But I thought the better of it, and just simply went out to look for a bathroom.
On the second floor, there were two. One happened to be near me, and I was overjoyed to find no one in it. I tried to block the entrance with the rubber trash can as well as I could, but it was soft and light, and had nothing in it, so I had to be paranoid.
Paranoid enough not to flush. It was silent in the hall out there, if anyone was passing they'd hear and possibly investigate. I stood before the large waist-to-ceiling high mirror, looked at the graffiti on the walls. My hair was a mess, it needed to be cut weeks before, I had decided, but I hadn't had the time to do anything about it. I was glad I never wore make-up, it would have been running from the sweat and tears and is that blood?
I'd been wounded somehow, probably while dodging my ninja. I touched the corner of my forehead with a paper towel. God, I thought, these are the same paper towels, all hard and crunchy until you get them really wet... I doused it in another toilet rather than running the water. Smart me. Ugh.
There was a nasty long cut along my hairline, I noticed as I kicked the stick away from the sink to get closer to the mirror. A small line of blood continued to well in the wound, every time I dabbed at it.
I wasn't going to give up on this. I got compulsive about fixing it, thought about trying to find a first aid kit, and then just stood before the mirror crying.
I've never been the most emotionally stable of women. In fact, I'd been known to break into tears at the drop of a hat, and I figured that this qualified as one honkin' big hat. For long minutes, I watched the tears fall into the dry sink, mingling with the bits of blood which occasionally joined them.
By the time I was okay, I looked up and saw myself in a totally different light.
Looking myself over with that other sight, I decided I was pretty damn cool. I cleaned myself up more calmly, and looked at that cut again. It was still bleeding, scalp wounds tended to do that, didn't they?
Well.
If Maia can fry people with her hands, and some zitfaced kid can hold back three hundred maddened people, I can probably fix my head.
Maybe I need to use my hands? Focus the magic in them? No, screw that. I decided just to look in the mirror and watch it heal. And it did. I was calm for this. I didn't freak out, I took it in stride. I could discover virtually anything about myself now, I would take it for what it was worth. Something weird had happened to me, and a number of other people.
So I was now controlling it. That was the important part. I hoped that no one could tell that I was up here because of that, the way I had sensed the person in the hall below, but I didn't think anyone had 'seen' me.
What else can I do? I put myself to a mental test. I couldn't try anything much out, I knew that would be dangerous.
Mind control. Ah. I could try that, surely. Something subtle, rather than overt. As subtle as the urge to come out to the old school, as subtle as making someone not see me when I walk before them.
I picked up the stick, after drawing out the splinters from my hands, and strode out of the bathroom.

Math. Ah, math. How I hated that classroom, I passed it without a sound. There were people beyond the corner, I would be putting my new abilities to the test.
Without that nervous habit of mine, that of worrying if what I was doing was okay, I turned on and continued to walk, toward the sounds.
They rounded the corner before I reached it, they were several paces away from it when they passed me. Five people, three wearing the black robes -- nothing on them, though. No silver design. Those were the kids, they were being attended by two adults who wore regular street clothing. The kids looked stunned, surprised, happy.
They passed me without looking at all. I moved around the corner, and stopped when I had heard them enter a classroom somewhere down the hall.
I pressed into the wall, clutched my shirt over my heart and exaggeratedly breathed out. It worked.
That over, I walked with more confidence to the other stairwell.
But now, something else caught my attention. I had walked from the south side earlier (the main entrance), north to the basement room. From there, up the stairs, here I was on the east side top floor, and I saw something through a wall with that sight.
Something really weird.
So I went into the nearest classroom, there was no one in this one either, which finally struck me as odd because this was after all still only May, and school would supposedly be out in late June, right? No one around. Well, they'd have been cooked by the mage squad, I guess.
The windows on the east wall were open, fortunately, and I took the chair from behind the teacher's desk to stand on. I didn't really need to look through the windows, I could see this thing very clearly with the magical sight.
I was getting better with it.
The source of the magic, below me, on the ground there in the center of the physical education courtyard, was a large circular slab.
Around it, people walked and spoke in laughing tones. All of them had the black robes, the ones laughing had the silver accents in different patterns. I saw Portaga walking up to one of the slinky bimbos, offer her a drink. It was some god damn cocktail party down there.
I stared at the disk for a long time. It was about sixteen feet across, if my artistic judgment and perspective training was to be trusted, and to the normal eye it looked to be a sort of twilight red-gold color. To the magical eye, however, it glowed a steady shining green, the sort of LED button green or the color that tactical simulations are always drawn in in movies. The whole of the disk shone, but what then amazed me was, while I was watching, it irised open into a pillar of magic, then closed again.
The actual physical disk had not changed, just the magical part.
This action attracted the attention of those with the mage diamond pattern near it. They stepped away just a bit, superstitiously gesturing. I imagined it felt at that distance like a small camp fire had gone ballistic into a funeral pyre, and then back again. I could feel the pressure of it, sensed it flowing through me, then vanishing.
I shook my head.
"That sure as hell wasn't there when I was going to this school," I muttered to myself, disappearing from the window and taking stock of anything useful in the room.
It was possibly used as both a math and English class, I noticed both kinds of books sitting in their respective piles beside the teacher's desk. I opened that desk, took out a knife which had undoubtedly been confiscated from some kid. It was a small one, in its own single leather casing. It fit in my front pocket, but I clipped it onto my belt loop where I could reach it quickly.
Then I found some paperwork which disturbed me. It had the school's image as a letterhead logo, but beside it, where the old name of the place had normally been (it was the McFadden Memorial High School when I had gone) was the name DAIS.
I looked at the disk outside, nodded to myself, remembered the name. It did however bring thoughts of sacrifices and other bad things to mind, a dais in literature usually means someone's going to die.
The letter written on this paper was little more than a note from one teacher to another.
Shock treatment this afternoon going well, Alice
Below that was another hand, probably the other teacher in the room at a later time.
Be sure to collect the right three for the afternoon ceremony, Craig
I looked up compulsively at the clock, it was now five in the evening. Had all that time gone by? I got there at ten, barely. It's already been a long day, I decided.
Then I noticed that the whole time I'd been running around, there were no bells for classes, and certainly none while we were incarcerated. They've disabled them, I figured, or they've turned the system off.
I smiled, and told myself that I was not going to go downstairs and try to turn them back on. I couldn't find my way through that front office if I had to, upon remembering its altered state.
I went out, after finding nothing else of interest or personal defense. The lights were always on in the ceiling, one thing that stayed the same. The halls always had that eerie sameness every time one walked through them, at night, for the prom or parent's night, they were precisely the same as during the daylight hours.
Three more times I passed people in the halls, with my stick and my knife ready, and all three times people just walked right by. I recognized two of the teachers, I hadn't had them myself but one of them Ian constantly talked about. She was a large woman, and now wore a black robe with silver flame patterns running from both her neckline to her ample midsection, and from the hemline up. She looked good in it, at least. It looked appropriate.
She was a language teacher of some sort, and she was accompanying two younger units down the hall. They had pleased expressions, both kids, and also had the same flame design on their new robes. They'd been initiated.
Ah.
I turned and followed them. Quietly, I had to keep reminding myself. And concentrate on other people who might wander by and think to see me.
She led the kids into a large room, and I snuck in as the door shushed closed on its hydraulic hinge.
Running into class late was a favored activity of mine, in years past. I still had the touch.
I sat into the corner behind a plant, just in case. The woman took out two large books and handed them to the kids.
"These will be your journals," she said, and I knew that I'd heard her loud laughter in a room beside the one I had ignored German in. "The language I expect you to use is the Dais standard. Learning it will take some work," she said and I squinted and tried to see the pages. "But I know that you'll do fine," she smiled broadly, "because you've been Shocked and you came out of it."
The kids paused before seeming happy. They knew something I didn't. Shock treatment.
The Dais.
Bingo.
"If you have any observations," the woman continued a moment later, "do write them down. We will meet as a full class as soon as that is possible," she then looked right at me, "but that might not be for a while. Now, you can go home or back to the courtyard. Just stay clear of the new students, and everything will be fine."
When they stood to leave, I concentrated on blanking myself into the corner. They passed me without looking, and without comment. The teacher stood and patted the chair beside her.
I looked at her and shook my head. "I'll sit here, thanks," I said.
"Suit yourself," she said. "But it'll be much more comfortable in a real chair."
"Comfort is the least thing on my mind," I said quietly, thinking about the messy basement. I realized that I must smell.
"I remember seeing you around the AP classes," she continued with a smile. "What was your GPA?"
"Two," I said with a smirk, holding up one index finger, to indicate that I was lying. She looked appropriately appalled at an advanced placement student not graduating with a four-point-oh or better. "I was a shitty student," I said. "Apparently I've been called back for further testing."
"Lethe," she said, how did she know my name? Ian? Okay, I'll let that slide. "You are obviously intelligent, otherwise you wouldn't be here. But you can't just sneak around the school expecting to ... What are you expecting, anyway?" She leaned in, with that big ass beehive hairdo leaning closer.
"I expect to maybe survive long enough to check out what the hell has happened to my old school," I said, examining the new splinters in my fingers, "and maybe find Ian--"
"He came?" She looked up, as if he were there.
"We came together," I growled, "but once we'd been herded into the basement, I lost contact with him. I think he's been taken somewhere, other people went more missing than dead," I said. I looked back up at her. "You do know that people are being slaughtered in the basement, don't you?"
At that, she moved back to her seat. Her grim lips told me more than her voice.
"Yes," she said. "But it's necessary."
I almost yelled, but I didn't. Rather, I stayed silent and looked like I was yelling.
Then, "when did this Dais thing happen?"
"Less than a year ago," she said, looking again at the wall with the windows in it.
"And no one else heard about it?" I asked, "nobody called the police or the government?"
"They cannot be part of this," she said mysteriously.
I mouthed those words. "But ..." I looked at the door, expecting someone to enter, but they simply passed by. When I started talking again, I was keenly aware that time was slipping by and I wanted to be somewhere else. "Killing kids is the best option? What about their families?"
"You have the answer to that right there," she pointed and then indicated her forehead, tapping it with long artificial nails. I nodded.
"So I do. But that can't last long, people have friends, family in other cities. Is this isolated?" I waved my hand at the east wall, I couldn't help but see the thing laying there.
"So far as we can determine."
"You're really not fazed by all this shit?" I asked, a little desperate edge to my voice, which I couldn't help. "I mean, I just watched more than twenty people get deep fried by some ninja bitch downstairs --"
"Watch your language," she hissed.
My lips were dry. I licked them and they were still dry.
"The Dionin are what we call them," she plainly meant the dragon ladies. "They are highly trained, in many things, not the least of which being the magic you saw and use yourself."
"They're security." She nodded. "What does principal Portaga have to do with this?"
"He's a Shocker," she said, looking away. "Shock staff. He isn't any good at anything else," she said bitterly and with a wry smile, "except flirting with the Dionin. And why they put up with the likes of him, I don't know."
"Wanted him for yourself," I muttered, and she laughed.
"He's merely an administrator. The rest of us, my fellow teachers, we have our own duties to continue, and whether it's in service of the general public or the Dais it doesn't matter. I get to teach, I've been Shocked --" she indicated her dress and its silver pattern, "and I survived."
"Like the kids," I said. "What is that, anyway?"
"Shocking," she said carefully and quietly, "is what happens to someone when they are on the Dais to be judged."
"When it opens up," I muttered to myself, but she nodded.
"If a student, or a teacher, or anyone I suppose, is there, they might have certain properties which the Dais deems useful. I myself have the use of languages, and literature, so I proved myself useful. Portaga must be good at whatever it is he does, he survived too."
"So ..." I waved my hand around, "how? What happens?"
She went silent.
"Okay, let's move on. What purpose is this Dais going to serve the whole rest of the world? I mean, take it over? Run it smoothly? Kill all non-believers?"
"All three," she said, "I think," and she got up and exited the room.

It isn't sentient, I decided. Whatever it was, the Dais was not intelligent. It was a tool, but of what? I stared at it, again, from the window. My arm resting above my head, I leaned against the wall and just stared at it with the night falling. The floodlights lit the courtyard with harsh white light, I saw the yellow of the parking lot beyond, and heard the sounds of the city out there.
So close and yet I couldn't seem to bring myself to leave. I had to find Ian. I wanted to see him, even if it was to confirm that he was dead. I hoped Tim had made it this far into the night, wondered how many legs Dave had broken, how much mindless babbling Sherrie had done.
I left the classroom and walked down the hall, pausing only to drink at the fountain by the stairwell. I made my way into the main floor, where the science classes were held. This late, there should be no one around, but there were voices from offices. Perhaps, I considered, the staff just sleep here?
Christ. Twenty-four hour security. I nearly ran into another Dionin, on my way to the front of the building. She swished by in a loose fitting jogging outfit with a torn robe -- the only way she would allow the silver logo to remain on her from that robe. I liked this one, I followed her. She was a redhead, about seventeen, probably a senior. She was evenly built, looked like she might be on the running team, with those legs. I remembered one of my oldest friends had been on that team, once long ago, and she had those calf muscles which could kill you. I walked behind the Dionin intent on covering myself in her hind vision.
She walked to the stairwell, the front one. We passed through that office again, but fortunately there was no one in it. Otherwise I was going to get a work out with this damn masking talent of mine.
When she began to enter the corridor to the basement pit, I stopped. There were five distinct magical presences there, and I was certain that any one of them might break my illusion pretty quick.
Illusion. I smiled with half my mouth, and thought about what I might throw at them. Both literally and figuratively, I reasoned, if I chucked something down the hall, and made it seem like ...
I scanned the nearby supply room. Here was one of those big rolling buckets, with the mop and broom attachment. It had cold, soapy water in it, it would be heavy enough. I set another smaller bucket on top of the mop, balancing it and then deciding to duct-tape it into place. The wide broom was of the T-bar variety, which again suited my purpose perfectly, and even if it hadn't, there were three more just like it hanging on the walls beside me, large crosses waiting victims.
I don't like imagery like that, I thought, and tried to clear it from my head, but it had been a long night, and I was very tired. My energy level was pretty low, and my imagination was as always running high right before sleeping.
But I couldn't possibly sleep, not here, I thought, so I guess hallucinating was the only option.
I taped the broom beside the mop, giving it arms. Then I cast about for a piece of clothing, something in my sleep deprived mind told me find a robe, they're probably all over the place, but I did no such thing. Instead, I found a pair of overalls, and bedecked the bucket-headed broom-armed monster.
I could animate this thing. I was just about tired enough that it even scared me, in the half-light inside the supply room. I couldn't turn on the light, that would be bad. And surely no one was coming in to get anything to clean up the pit beyond.
Carefully, I wheeled the creation out of the room, praying suddenly to a god I didn't believe in that I was more silent than it seemed to me. I paused, breathed in a couple times to clear my head and the scent of old cleanser and floor wax didn't help there, and I tried to think of what I could make.
It was easier than I hoped. I scanned the hall again, checked up the stairwell also, just in case, and then got a better idea.
The biggest guy in the gang had lived, I think, long enough for me to get a good look at him, anyway, before I left. So. I concentrated on his image, the short black hair, blue and white bandanna wide over his forehead, small and slightly under-grown goatee. Hunched pose, low baggy pants, tank top under the open short sleeved shirt which he'd bought (or stolen, it didn't matter, this was an image anyway) in a size way too large, shoes untied but clean.
I pressed behind it, wheeled it out into the hall. The stairwell was in front of me, the hall to the pit was to the left and leading straight away from me, but there was another hallway leading off to my right. It led into the boiler room, I could hear it, and other more sinister places with piping and valves and gauges and things I never liked to be near. It would be a perfect place to hide, wouldn't it? If someone were to get into it, it might take several people many hours to find them.
"Okay, Chewy," I whispered, "do your thing."
I swung the creation, illusion and all, out into the pit hallway, screaming in the tone and words my friend Rikki had often used when insulting white people.
I held on to the rope at the bottom of the bucket, so I didn't have to be seen. To the girls down the hall, and the single boy, there was a raving gang member waving his arms and swearing at them, grabbing his crotch, flipping them off and generally being a terrific distraction. I pulled the rope, ducked further into the right hallway before remembering that I had to get into the storage room first, and then pushed the contraption down the hall.
I dove into the storage room's barely-open door just as the six people ran past. The redhead was in the lead, followed by the boy, then the four other girls. Two of them, it looked like, had the diamonds of mage-class, the others were Dionin.
Chewy made his exit via the first left, smashed into something which started bellowing steam, and I ran out the door once the security people were screaming at each other and pawing at their faces.
I had a choice. I could maintain Chewy, or I could do something else. I slid to a halt in the hallway beside the pit doors, and finally noticed that they were unguarded, completely.
I smiled, rolled my head, and burst into the room.

Shocked. I guess, using the normal interpretation of the word, was what I was. Standing there, shocked. I saw fewer than one hundred people in the room, at least ones moving around and looking alive. I didn't see any of the ones I knew directly, certainly didn't see Ian. The lights had dimmed, mainly, I looked up to see, because someone had broken two out of the six hanging fixtures which provided the only lights.
It still smelled horrific. I wanted to puke my guts out, but I had to maintain. The dozen or so people who reacted immediately did so with the look of hostility I had had on my own face the last time I was there, then they noticed that I was no Dionin, and not a Mage, and in fact looked kinda familiar.
I looked like one of them.
"Come on," I breathed, "the guard's being distracted."
Handful by handful, they rose. It was taking too long, I looked behind me at the doorway, which I was holding open, and hazarded a look down the hall, it was still empty of people but had noises that said we had best hurry.
People started passing me, I dropped my arms, and I waited. I stood my ground as they walked past, looking for Ian.
And I still didn't see him. My stomach tightened.
For a number of reasons. Not the least of which was that when the crowd parted momentarily I saw the huge pile of bodies that had built up at the bottom of the room. They looked like they were already in hefty bags, all blackened and slick. I looked away.
Then I heard one of the Dionin shout from down the hall.
People panicked. For an instant, the electric feeling of someone's magic not working on me passed through my limbs and body, then I saw that the door block was up, only slightly different.
I ran into the pit, as the rest of the slower people left in it cried out to be freed. I wished I had my stick, but I'd left it in the supply room, stupid of me.
Now I was back at square one, wasn't I?
"Not if I can help it," I said to myself, and moved back to the doors. The right side, closer to the front of the building, I stood and waited. There, I caused another illusion to form on the other side of the closed door. It was of principal Portaga on the inside of the open door, being threatened by another Chollo.
People in the room started screaming when they saw it, too. Good. Now, fall for it you lump.
He did. The boy smacked face first into the closed doors, dazing himself. He wasn't the same one I'd hit, he'd probably been sent home, if he lived long in the riot at all. The other two, then, how to get their attention?
I saw their auras moving to their friend, and then I reached through the barrier with another illusion. Something I saw in ...
In her head, I guess. I smiled, I was better at this than I wanted to think. I don't want to get ahead of myself, though. One thing at a time. The horror of a being made of flies and dung, right out of the girl's childhood. Ahh.
She screamed, babbled, and slid on her butt backwards into the wall, where she stayed.
The third one stopped attending to their male friend, and moved to the girl's side.
Then the doors were not blocked any more. I slipped on a chameleon shade of interior wallpaint and opened the door.
There, to my disgust, was the little ninja dragon girl.
"This makes twice," she said, raising her sword.
The long one. Fuck.
"And she can count, too," I muttered. "Amazing."
She sneered, that perfect little lipsticked mouth looking very nasty indeed in the sickly light of the hallway.
The others hadn't seen me. I backed away, into the moving crowd. The other two Dionin were busy with them, and since the prisoners were tired, frightened and lost, the Dionin fresh and basically better off, they had little trouble stopping them from getting any farther into the hall.
I lost the Asian Dionin once, I thought. But she learns fast. I felt the touch of the sword, and saw a spray of blood coming from someone else's face. She didn't care who she hit, great.
I sprinted into the open hallway once I was past the redhead Dionin there, who didn't see me -- or if she did she had nothing for it. I went for the stairwell, got a few steps up before the girl followed me, crashing through the door. It hissed shut, there was no other sound, and I didn't feel like saying anything.
Portaga was at the head of the stairs, on his way down.
The look of surprise on his face was worth it, because I swear, he didn't see me. Not until little ninja bitch pointed at me with her sword and screamed, "stop her, man!"
"Oh yeah, I like this situation... NOT," I yelled. I'd rather deal with the guy, I decided, and started up the steps. Then another Dionin stepped beside him, and I changed my mind rapidly.
Okay. Bright idea. I flipped over the railing and back onto the floor, near the Asian Dionin. She smiled, one of those insincere grins which says volumes. She was looking forward to damaging me.
Well, I had no intention of letting her do this. She had only chased me before, we didn't fight. And she probably didn't know that I knew how, technically speaking, to kill someone with my right thumb.
If I lost that thumb, I don't know where I'd be.
"Okay, let's go," I said. That was incredibly stupid, wasn't it?
She nodded slowly. She raised the sword, she knew how to use it. Damn.
I armored myself, remembered the knife, and ignored it. It wasn't going to do a bit of good.
By armoring myself I mean that I actually magicked up myself a shield of sorts, I could see it clearly covering my arms and face, and if I concentrated on it too hard I might blind myself because it was so damn thick. I hoped it held against steel which was sharp enough to cut the railing beside me.
I ducked the first lunge, and then I realized something, she wasn't using eastern technique, she was using fencing. Both easier to deal with and harder at the same time. I didn't know if she knew eastern technique, but I had to assume that she did.
How could I fight this?
By not fighting?
I smiled. I didn't parry with my arm for no reason at all, woman, I thought to myself without saying a word, not even crying out.
The armor, the magic armor, held a split second before the force of her swing and the gravity of my arm broke it. My concentration lapsed, the skin slid open, and the blade slowly entered my wrist. It was so slow. And this wasn't because I was seeing things all in slo-mo, either, it was because the armor was making the blade hard to move. That at least was good. I saw the trickle of blood move over the shiny silver blade, well up, and slip back onto my skin on the way to the ground.
But it didn't hit the ground. It stayed on my arm. The armor again. I smiled.
"Well, this is uncomfortable," I said, teeth gritted. I pulled my arm carefully free of the blade. It made a smacking noise which disgusted me.
"She hasn't been taken yet," the other Dionin shouted, and I temporarily ignored her. My first problem was this girl before me who looked at her blade and back at my arm with a lot more anger than wonder in her eyes.
"You're good," she hissed.
"Better than you think," I said. The cut on my arm healed but the blood would be there for a while. I left my legs uncovered while I had to split my attention and heal myself. That cut went to the bone, my hand was numbed for a moment. Then I got the feeling back, and knew I would need it.
Three times the Dionin moved in, swung oddly upward at me, and then stepped back.
"You know, I don't have a sword," I said, and when I had moved in beside her -- to her amazement, she hadn't been quick enough to recover from the third thrust -- I kicked her legs out and grabbed for the short sword still at her side. As she tumbled onto the ground, she cut herself with the sword, right about when I was pointing the other at her neck. "But I do now," I said.
"Get her," I heard Portaga hiss, from above, but I didn't look. The clacking of the Dionin's shoes on the metal stairs said she was about even with my head, and that was not good. Not at all.
So rather than continue this bullshit, I kicked the Asian girl which made her ball up at my feet, threw the sword up, unaimed, at the Dionin on the stairs, and bolted out the door back into the pit hallway.
Again. I hated this, I really did. The crowd had not been completely cleared from the hall, and I used this to my best advantage as the others ran into the corridor. I heard them shouting, and the crowd reacted to this in a manner I liked, they got hostile.
I kicked the last pit door open, watched as people realized that the doors weren't sealed, and then continued my way up the hall into the other stairwell.
Once there, I had a flashback, shook my head to clear it, and then ran up the stairs. I got out at the first floor, and continued to sprint back to the front entrance.
The doors were shut, locked, and sealed. I pressed my hand onto the magical aura, and read it.
I was definitely better at this than any untrained person should be, I thought, but then again, I had played role playing games and wrote fantasy for the past ten years or so. I had it in me, I guess.
The aura was Orn's. And it was much stronger than mine. I backed away from it, maybe he felt it, maybe not. It wasn't connected to him directly, I couldn't trace it to him. So maybe not. I moved into the eastern wing, and locked myself into a private office.
It was Portaga's. Oh, how sweet.
I knew that I could out wit him, no problem. But if he brought anyone else into the office, and I was there, it would become one quickly. There were no windows in his office. I stomped around, cursing in several languages, and then sat heavily on the green leather chair facing his desk.
"Why no, Principal Portaga, I had no idea that the school system was in such distress," I said to the air. "And you say you can clean it up? By all means, please do!" I waved my hand at the illusion which I brought to life, caused it to get stabbed by about a million little knives, and then dissipated it.
"Oh, fuck," I finally said to the air, "what am I going to do?"
"Maybe watch your back more closely?"
I fell out of the chair, spun on the floor and fumbled with the spinning chair between me and him.
Orn stood without moving, next to the plant in the corner. The oldest trick in my book, okay. Figures. His glasses were tucked away in his suit pocket, and when he blinked slowly, I saw that his eyes were not black, but quite blue.
"You've got a lot of potential," he said, a hint of irony in his voice. "Don't blow it before you get the chance to use it." He stepped once, away from the plant. I stayed on the floor, I think he liked that.
I shuddered, and then stood against my better judgment.
I stood against his will. I then smiled. "Good enough?" I said, and he narrowed his eyes.
"Better than most. Don't try to fight me," he said. "I would have to kill you."
I paused. Looked down, saw the glow of magic on his hands. What had he been doing? Was he going to do? I looked back into his eyes.
"I won't, then," I said. "But I do have to get out of here."
"Not advisable," he said, indicating the passing shadows and glow of Dionin magic. They left the doorway, probably at his command. I watched as little flashes of magic played on his face, and around his head.
"Tell me something," I said cautiously when the Dionin had gone. "I need to find someone," he looked back at me, "his name is Ian, he came in with me."
He smiled, and I really didn't like him. Again.
"It certainly figures that you two would be together. Well," he placed his hand on my shoulder and I pushed it off a moment later, "you should stop looking. He didn't pass." He smiled, showing teeth that had to have been caps. Nobody has teeth that perfect, not even me.
I showed him mine, my teeth, that is, in a smile which mirrored his.
"I don't believe you," I said, and that was the truth. Not just because I wanted to believe Ian was alive, and well, but because I didn't think that Orn would kill someone just to do it, like some other people in the building.
Then an amazing thing happened to me. I felt the hand at my shoulder, the other one found its way to the back of my neck, and when he kissed me I passed out.
Fucking vampire. I guessed, maybe he was just really that much better than me, right? I woke only a moment later, being shoved back into the pit.
I saw the look on his face, smug and dangerous. I knew what I was dealing with, now. He'd do anything.
I watched the door close again, heard the sobbing behind me, and stood in place just thinking.
"Get us out of here," someone whined. "God, please get us out of here!"
Others joined him, I stayed out of it. Just looking at the door, and Orn's distinct aura all over it.
Well, I couldn't get out that way.
Smiling madly to myself, it was time to try out something new.
I was just tired enough that my visual memory of the upper stairwell was very clean and crisp.
It was about three in the morning when I teleported out of the pit and into the stairwell at the north end of the building.

I kept moving. From one room to another, at this time in the morning no one was out, not even stray Dionin. I felt for Orn's aura, he was asleep or doing a darn good impression of it, down on the other side of the building.
I made it to the exit near the gym. The door was unlocked and made no noise, even if it had, I'd have suppressed it. The night air felt very good, and like my mind at the moment, it was crisp and clear, with a hint of unreality to it.
I walked to the Dais. There were two people near it, neither Dionin, neither watching me.
I found a seat on the north side of the courtyard, sat down, and watched it as the sun rose. It irised several times while I watched, impressively attended by a magical sound which I hadn't heard before. How many more senses did I have than before? I hadn't been placed on the Dais, but I was certainly acting like I had.
Maybe proximity? Maybe... just something odd clicked on in my head?
As the sun came up, people began moving around. I ducked back into the building.
This time, through the gym. The girls who had been taken out of the pit earlier were there, sleeping still. There were two young women, older than the girls, younger than Orn, wearing the single silver band that Portaga had: Shock staff. Maybe they were there to initiate the process?
Or just hold the girls' hands? They looked pretty much like cheerleaders, able to breeze by the crisped remains of someone who hadn't made it through the Shock and still smile at the next one and tell them it's okay, just step over it. I walked into the room, tired and messy.
One of them tsked with her tongue, and told me to take a shower and get ready.
Oh, god, she thinks I'm here for...
A dreadful slow smile crossed my face at that point, and I did as I was told.
The showers were as I remembered them, mostly cold with occasional burst of burning hot water. The towels were freshly laundered, I got all the blood out of my hair and off my arm. My clothing was gone when I looked for it.
I found someone else's, thought it fit better than mine. She won't mind, I thought, as I made her not mind, passing by the sleeping girl and tossing a thought into her head.
Then, I sat down beside the blond attendant.
"So, how're things going this morning?" I asked, smiling and reaching for her coffee.
"Oh, just fine. If you want, you can come to the ceremony coming up. Not like anyone misses them." She smiled, absolutely pure.
"Good, I'll do that."
I watched as she received a stack of black robes from someone outside, they only stuck their head into the upper half of the door which had previously been used in gym classes as a check out point for balls, jump-ropes, nets and what-have-you sports equipment. The pile of plastic wrapped robes reminded me even more of graduation day, it was exactly the same.
She looked over a list on a small yellow pad, and looked for a black marker. From a pile beside her, she took a piece of pre-marked paper and taped it to one of the robe packages. Then, she checked off a name on the yellow pad, called out the name, waited for the girl to arrive, and wrote her name on the paper stuck to the robe.
A few minutes later, after most of the room had been roused, I noticed a pattern.
"You didn't call Anna," I said of one of the gang-girls. She sat abjectly on her cot, did not look up at the mention of her name.
"Of course not," the woman said. She nodded significantly, and I smiled like I knew what she meant.
Of course not, she's Mexican, I thought? Of course, she's a gang member? She's got half a brain? Of course, she's... what? I gently prodded the Shock staffer to tell me.
"Because she's pregnant," she said, a harsh whisper.
"Ah."
I followed the group out, they were less than solemn, more than sober. I hung to the walls and led myself over to the north wall again, where my chair had been unoccupied all this time. I sat in it and watched.
It got monotonous, because Portaga was going on like he had at my graduation, about the future and the world and things he knew nothing about.
I watched Orn walk up to him, whisper something in his ear, and then walk away.
Then I decided to head to the open doors which lead into the student dining area, because I saw a large table covered with what looked a lot like food.
There were people who saw me, I watched them, they watched me back.
Shit. Maybe it's that I'm so tired, I thought. I walked into the room, and then caught a stray magical wisp from a Dionin behind me. I hustled, and ducked beneath that white tablecloth.

After I slept and reminisced, I felt much better. The feeling of being watched left me, I had to look very closely at every section of the room just in case he was standing there.
The Dais outside caught my attention. I could also see about a hundred people there, the brighter of the magical auras belonged to the guards around the Dais, and many other auras were scattered around the milling group. The darker ones, those without magical power, included most of the kids lined up to be placed on it.
Irised, fully open, the Dais gleamed and put out a whole lot more power than I liked to look at. It wasn't like the other times I had seen it do so, and then I noticed the web of power from the mages near it. They were keeping it open, possibly reinforcing it. I wondered if this was the same open session as before I slept?
Yes, it had to be. There were people off to the left, therefore closer to me, who were spitting power out their ears, uncontrolled. They had to just have been Shocked into activity. One of them came close to the room, banged on the closed glass door, and I got up and let him in.
He staggered inside with a girl at his side, both of them had the flames of Literature over their shoulders. I indicated the food which had gone to room temperature over the hours. They dove into it, not caring who I was or how much I looked like someone they'd seen before.
The pair of kids on the couch. I was pretty sure of it. I smiled.
"So you passed," I said, smiling. They nodded, happily, around several large bites of sandwiches.
"What about you?" The boy asked. "When are you going?" He indicated my clothing, and I nodded.
"Dunno," I said. "I might not need to, the way I'm going." I looked out the curtain again, as a girl stepped to the Dais. There was a brief flash, magic all over the place blinding me, and then she had silver all over the robes shoulders. She was a Dionin.
I smiled to myself, a Dionin I knew in my American History class. I wanted to talk to her. I didn't think they'd brainwash the Dionin, she made a good choice, I thought, that dragon of hers went nearly as far as Rada's had -- just above her navel. That ranked her about Maia, certainly. She'd be powerful.
She stepped down, and walked my way. She saw me standing there in the glass door, and nodded deeply. Then, she came in and enjoyed some food.
Her hands were shaking. I took her aside after she had loaded a plate.
"What's your name again?" I asked quietly.
"Linda," she said. "Linda Hernandez. This Dionin shit's got me all wired," she indicated her shaking hand. She had perfect nails, long black nails with a silver gleam on each one. "Check this out," she said, after noticing them herself. I gently took her hand, and watched the silver. Whatever magic she was able to do, she didn't know herself, yet. I decided that she might be able to cause magical damage like Maia, pointed this out, and listened as the kids behind us gasped when I said so.
"She hasn't been--" one hissed, the other silenced her.
Linda looked up at me, one eyebrow up. "You haven't?"
I slowly shook my head, smiling and looking sidelong at the wall: the Dais had lit up again, and I saw something I didn't want to see. Someone didn't leave the platform. The Shock stewardess tched her tongue and led the next potential victim to the stand. The sounds of the crowd turned from pleased cheering to silence, then hesitatingly back to cheering.
"How many fatalities have they had this time?" I asked, and Linda thought about it.
"Out of the ... oh, I don't know, forty of us, maybe eight. Nine?" She pointed at the wall, and I nodded. "Nine out of forty-four, I guess. Is that bad?"
I went to a crouch before her, staring intently at the wall and beyond. "Well, I think it is. It means several things." The kids were there, leaning in and watching me. I looked up at them and forced them to leave with a strong thought. They disappeared back outside. Linda's mouth didn't open up, but she looked like she was going to ask. I continued. "One: the Shock people chose wrong. Two, their professors chose badly. Three, Portaga or Orn or one of the others chose them on purpose."
"It couldn't be Portaga," Linda said with some confidence. "Might have been Booth, though."
"Booth?"
"Orn."
I nodded. Didn't give any thought to him actually having a last name, why did a demon from hell need one? I didn't think about him longer. That might ... give me away? Ugh, was I that paranoid?
Yes, as a matter of fact I was. I stood again, let Linda eat in privacy, and watched again. They were on number forty-five who came off with this nifty wave pattern, snaking around his neckline. I asked Linda over my shoulder what that meant.
"Physical education," she said. "Well," she snorted, "weapons training, martial arts, you know. Physical education. A lot of the Dionin are chosen by the phys ed Profs."
"Did they teach you that, or do you just know it?" I asked.
"They taught me," she said, pondering. "Why?"
"Did they teach you that I'm... Are you going to try to capture me after you're finished eating?"
She looked up at me curiously, intently. Then, "no, of course not." She paused, looked thoughtful. "Do you know what happened to Jefe?"
"What'd he look like?"
"He's--" I caught such a strong image from her head, that I waved my hand suddenly, cutting off her reply.
"Yes, I think he's okay. Hold on." I took a breath, tossed my head back and searched for him down there in the pit. "Sure enough. He's still in the pit. He's a good guy, I almost got him out last time."
"Almost?" She said, putting down her plate, "you got... You got out of there? How?"
I was going to tell her, but number forty-five came in loudly, grabbed a handful of meat and sat down beside Linda, grinning widely at her. She scooted down and indicated that I come to the side of the couch. I did, backed into the wall beside the corner. I didn't have much of a view of the goings on through the glass door, but I didn't need it to see.
The phys ed monster on the couch was too innately strong for me to just prod away. A minute later, after a certain silence and subsequent cheering outside, I raised my count and got up.
"I need a smoke," I said, tossing my head and Linda got up with me. We headed to the bathroom, and though neither of us smoked we both knew that we couldn't talk around the boy.
"Jefe had his shit together," I said, listening to the slight echo and then pushing the sink's press here button so rushing water covered our voices. "He was helping out at the front line, when I left. He wasn't one of those oh god get us out of here people," I smiled, and Linda laughed.
"He wouldn't be. I wonder if he'd go through Shock."
"I don't know, I think ..." I thought about it. What was it about someone who was placed there? We were slightly farther away from the courtyard, now, but I could still clearly see it. When the Dais lit up, so did the Mages around it.
That was a very distinctly disturbing thing. I told Linda that no, he probably wouldn't survive this ceremony.
"But the Dais opens up on it's own," I pointed out. "Without the Mages around, he probably would, I'd put money on it and I don't gamble."
"The Mages are controlling who dies." Linda said flatly. "I kinda knew that, but... This is really sinister, isn't it?"
I smiled.
"Look, let's get back to the ..." Linda watched me, and I got all tense.
"I've been looking for Ian, did you know him at all?" I asked, and she shook her head.
"But I remember you all hanging out together. I wasn't part of that crowd."
"Have you seen him?"
She only shook her head. I had this feeling, now. There was someone coming to the Dais.
I raced out, pretty sure of what I'd find.
What I found, was Ian, in a robe. Stepping onto the Dais, and ...
Orn's aura all over him, the same aura that had been on the doors. He was being stopped from moving. This was it. Not moving now was going to kill my best friend and potential mate. I didn't want that to happen.
I was sluggish, and then I figured out why. There were three Dionin standing beside me, none of them were Linda. I heard her arrive behind me, out of breath, and she tried to get the lower of the ranked Dionin to get away from me, but it wasn't working.
"Let me go," I said flatly, but I couldn't take my eyes off Ian on the Dais.
"Come on, let her go!" Linda yelled, and some people started to look.
I tried and succeeded taking one step forward, then another. I didn't want to hurt the Dionin, I didn't know who they were. I didn't see the Asian or the redhead anywhere. I did see Orn.
If I could get control of Ian around that barrier, I could get him off the Dais. If I could break the Mages' concentration I might allow the Dais to do it's job all by itself and that would dramatically increase his chance of survival. I continued to step into the crowd, which moved, and toward the Dais myself.
"Let him go," I said, and added mentally that urge -- that mind control which had been used on me the day before. Two of the Mages dropped out of the circle by the Dais, shaking their heads and backing up.
Three more. And Orn.
I concentrated on him. "Let him go," I said, growling. He smiled.
There was about half a moment before I made the decision, and then I leapt up to the Dais myself, wearing street-clothes borrowed from someone else, and physically pushed Ian off into the grassy courtyard.

The fleeting moment feels like all my nerves have been turned on. All of them. They sing, with power, pain, heat and cold and pressure and all the other magical sensations that don't have names in English yet. I am pretty sure that I can feel my hair, standing out from my scalp. My toes grip the dais, where in the world have my shoes gone?
The three Mages lose control over what the Dais does, and I feel Orn over there doing something bad. I ignore him, wanting to concentrate on this huge surge of power going through me. Clear, fine power.
I guess my heart races, it might stop, I could wind up like the greasy stain near my feet, but I don't, and then the Dais irises shut.
It doesn't swallow me up, fortunately.
I am left standing, without clothing, hands tingling and eyes closed, on the Dais as the sun goes down.

The hush that followed my Shock was then followed by Orn ordering around several of his Dionin.
And they wouldn't move. They were a little afraid to go to me, until he prodded them, and I felt them each take an arm. I allowed them to escort me down onto the ground, where I then felt Orn's distinct and cool hands on my face. He moved my face to look at his, but I hadn't opened my eyes just yet.
I was still enjoying the rush of power, and besides, he knew I could see him perfectly well through my eyelids.
"What have you done?" He hissed, and I smiled. Then, I opened my eyes.
"Fucked you up," I said. I saw Ian over his shoulder, looking confused and ... Looking doped, looking drugged, he'd just come out of whatever spell Orn had around him. "Hi, Ian," I said, weakly able to wave.
I looked at my hand, and then, had I the energy I would have leapt up and danced around trying to see the rest of me, I examined my bare skin.
"Where'd my clothes go?" I muttered, and then I smiled. I could see the patterns on my skin, shining, green magic.
And I saw the silver there too. Did this mean I was just tattooed by the Dais? Christ, I was. I sat up, oblivious to Orn, Ian and the whole assembly, and looked over my arm. It became apparent to me that the silver was under my skin, or a part of it, and this maybe was why they'd insisted on the black robes?
Maybe if I had one on, it'd be just as spiff. I had the Dionin dragon over my breasts, the clear, large diamonds of Mages on my shoulders and body, intricate scroll work all over everything else. I was completely covered.
I'd been considering getting a tattoo, but not like this.
I looked over at Rada, who had been one of the Dionin to assist me down. "I outrank you, bitch," I smiled.
She was about to do something nasty with that little stick, when one of the Mages stopped her.
"You should be dead," he said. He was a black man of about middle age, perhaps older, he had a lot of white in his black hair. His robe had three rows of diamonds, meaning he was of considerably lower rank than either Orn, and I check, or myself. He was one of the three left undistracted when I stepped up, one of those whose assignment was to kill me.
Well, not necessarily me, per se, but the number of people who conveniently had been zapped by the Dais had also been those who disagreed with the Mages.
Ah. I was reading his mind, sorry. Getting too much information through my head. The power was terrific, in the truest sense of the word.
"I ought to be," I said, sitting up and taking a shirt someone had offered. "But instead, you only managed to burn off my clothing. Thanks. It wasn't even mine," I winked at the blond Shock staffer, who suddenly looked from me to Orn to Ian, and backed into the crowd. Good sheep.
I stood, thankfully the shirt was a man's, and it went to my knees.
Ian and I finally embraced, and it was an eternity before either of us moved.
And that was the way it should have ended, right?
But it didn't.

Instead, among an equal amount of cheering and stunned muttering from the Mages, Shock staff and students, came a shout, clear above the noise.
"Get them back on the Dais," Orn said. "Now."
I felt hands on my arms, and saw more Dionin behind Ian. My first instinct was to do something magical, but I wasn't certain that the power I had in me now would be even remotely under control. I decided to wait. Ian was still woozy and confused, and tried to put up a fight, succeeded in elbowing one of the shorter Dionin in the neck and nothing else.
Some people in the crowd tried to intervene, and I saw Linda being hassled by one of the older Mages, she wasn't going to be able to get to us.
Why do you want us there, Orn?
Because one trip might open up the power and channels. A second time would be fatal, if all prior attempts were taken into account.
I could get his thoughts too easily, and wondered if he wanted me to know this?
Or maybe if he'd prodded me to ask in the first place?
Besides, I reasoned as I felt my hands go numb with a twist-tie restraint around the wrists (in front of my body, their mistake), I can stay calm through this, and Ian hasn't been on the Dais yet anyway. He's got a chance. I was suddenly tired of fighting the bad guys. So I allowed them to move me behind Ian, up the single step onto the Dais.
I wanted to go and sleep and digest some of this at a reasonable pace. I couldn't think straight, what with the humming of power, and the many sparks of magic distracting me. All of my senses were still on high, including all the magic ones. I could smell the Dais. Charged.
It was going to open soon anyway, I understood: the last time it opened the Mages kept it there, until the next regular moment, when they'd allow it to close. At least six hours had passed then.
"Don't I get any last words?" I asked, tired. There were pleading voices in the audience, and the Dionin were having a harder time now of keeping them under control.
Rather than waiting for Orn to decide he didn't want any such thing, I started talking anyway.
"This is a total nightmare," I said. "You people," I looked at the staff and my old teachers, "you should know what you're doing here... Silencing the non-believers," I paused, and the crowd had gone into silence themselves. "Seeking world domination," I looked at Orn, and he stared right back. "This is wrong."
"Stop preaching," Orn said, "it isn't buying you any time."
"I know when the Dais'll open up again," I spat. "I watched it all this morning," his face adopted a disgusted and slightly annoyed visage, he looked at one of the guard Mages, then back to me. "I don't think it'll kill me, Orn. What do you think?" I held out my arms, which I knew he could see were covered with the swirls and flames, diamonds and waves. He looked away.
Someone threw a robe up to us. As if, I smiled, and worked my way out of the twistie thing, examined it as I knelt to the ground and picked the robe up. It smelled like I remembered them, that kind of polyestery-pressed scent, fresh out of the plastic bag.
I got out of the twistie by sending it through my arms, okay? I figured, I could heal a sword wound, why not this?
I'd teleported myself. I could read minds. I could probably fly if I thought about doing it, which I didn't because I was still afraid of heights. And I was less than impressed at the thought that Orn wanted me dead rather than trying to persuade me to join him, as he was planning to do with Ian. They could be dangerous together, once Ian got over that moral thing. No, then again, we'd spoken in joking terms regarding his evil-scientist mode. This could be his big chance.
I reminded Orn of that.
And then I got the impression that he knew Ian would live, this one trip through the Dais. But me, he was more concerned that I might get away before it fried me.
I was still pretty well convinced that I would live. I slid into the robe, glad that finally I had something to conceal the fact that people could just look up the shirt onto my crotch.
When the air started to crackle, my head was very clear. I looked at Ian, who smiled, with the same confidence that I had. Yes, he knew he'd survive this too.
I started laughing, right when the Dais irised. This time, with my bare feet, I felt it slide open. It tickled, and then it hurt immeasurably.

The lump of plastic that was the twist tie thing melted quickly. I was burning, I guess, and it just vaporized away. My laugh turned into a shriek, it hurt. Much. Up my legs, onto my body and finally off to my head and fingertips.
Funny, the only color I saw was silver. Not green. I couldn't see, either, what I saw and what was happening to my eyes were mutually exclusive.
You know, how I referred to T2 before? Well, I felt like the melty T-1000 as it hit the molten metal below. Screaming. I didn't know I had that much air left in my lungs, screaming so long.
And then it was over.
With a shudder, a physical jolt, the Dais closed. I was aware that I had lived, but I was unclear on how this would affect my life. Maybe I was a crispy critter with Ian standing over me? Maybe I was a grease stain, I felt like one.
He touched my shoulder, and with the suddenness of a heartbeat and the fluttering of an eye, I realized that I was just fine.
I looked him over, Ian, I mean. He had this odd combination of silver patterns, it was diamonds, interspersed with a single band which curved below them, then another row of Mage, and another of the one which someone in the audience supplied was the Sciences stripe -- four of each in all.
He also had two stripes of silver in his beard, and at his temples, and he looked good that way.
He'd probably want to dye them, he was like that about looking old.
I laughed, showed him an image of himself through my eyes: something he didn't expect to see.
"Magic just isn't good enough for you," I pointed out. He laughed.
"Nothing's good enough for you, he said, and I noticed that the arm of the robe was decorated.
I pushed it up from my wrist to my elbow, exposing my skin and hoping that the silver had been moved, but I had no such luck, it was still all over me too, but the patterns had been imprinted on the robe now. They were pretty much the same as the ones on my skin, except that at the sleeve hems, it was a kind of gold-red. The same color as the Dais, I saw. At the hem by my feet, it was a purer red, and I wondered if there were any before me who had colors in their pattern.
The Dionin had to move aside, because the good guys had been let out of the pit and led back into the early evening air. Whistles, cat-calls, and chanting from the gang guys attracted my attention, and I blew them a sincere kiss, waving my hand in their screw-the-law signal. Then, Ian and I took one another's hands and raised them in victory, stepped off the Dais, and went into the crowd.

Unfortunately, it didn't end there, either. Although in my opinion, 'it' has. I have things to do with this place, the new School of Dais. Things which the world will know about pretty soon.
I'm sure Orn has something negative to say about that. But I'll deal with that later.

Dragons!

Orn and Lethe (and whoever else) are now exploring other worlds and finding dragons to bond.