Chapter 55 - Coven Conversations I

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Felix Sutter: Poor boy living in Sacramento, recently found out magic existed. Hard worker, knows the price of everything.

Erik Morsin: Heir to the Duchy of the Emerald Isle. Just wants to play his violin.

Sora Park: Erik’s loyal friend. Loves flying. An absolute broombrain.

Vivian Merryweather: An expert on all things color, fashion, and of the heart. Gets seasick easily.

Alexandria Renard: Wants to be the next Morgana Le Fay. Can’t speak louder than a whisper. 

Hazel Winslow: Ran away from an abusive cult. Awoke as a natural mind mage.

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 Then came the second fire: clean and unseen.
Those who held power - judges, mages, counselors, stewards -
Fell in their beds, choking on spell-smoke and betrayal.
Bjorn spoke but one word, and the wards obeyed.
It was not war.
It was erasure.

The Saga of Bjorn, Verse 20

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“The day’s over!” Sora whooped. “Praise the wind!”

“Except studying.” Erik coughed into his hand. Sora dramatically dropped to her knees.

“Noooooo!” She cried out, getting a number of sympathetic looks.

Emily headed out, but Odric hovered behind. Vivian and Alex emerged from the classroom a minute later, the blonde wiping away tears and the ginger looking ashamed of herself.

“We all good?” Erik asked.

Alexandria didn’t answer, instead looking to Vivian who sniffed.

“Yeah. We’re alright.” She said with a deep sigh. “I better get to detention… see ya, I guess.” She said.

“We’re all heading down, why don’t we head down together?” Erik suggested.

The seven of them laughed, shoved, and talked as they headed to the stairs. A group of second years turned the hall right as they were about to go down.

“Morsin!” One of them shouted, shooting a spell their way. The spellfire whizzed past Felix’s nose, missed Erik entirely, and slammed into Odric’s head. The boy tripped and stumbled, falling down the stairs.

Everyone froze as the sound of screams and breaking bones echoed up the staircase, ending with a sound of whooshing flames. The boy who cast the spell looked pale.

“Uh.” He said.

“Run!” Erik said, almost with glee.

The six of them laughed and shrieked as they stormed down the stairs, running down hallways and darting through doors. They weren’t chased at all, but it didn’t stop the fun.

“A challenge room!” Sora skidded to a halt. “Let’s see what’s here!”

“You just don’t want to study.” Erik teased.

“Well… bye then.” Vivian said. “I need to get to detention.”

“See you after. Dinner?” Alex whispered, her hoarse voice filled with longing and hope.

“Yeah! Always. BFFs, right?” Vivian gave the other girl a rib-crushing hug. With a wave, Vivian left, and then there were five.

“Let’s take a look!” Erik pushed the door open, and paused at the threshold.

“Red room, no wards, we’re still interested?” He said. Felix peeked over his shoulder, and saw all the lights in the room were red, instead of the usual green-blue of the rest of the castle. He rolled his eyes.

“Some of us don’t have the privilege of wards.” He said, pushing his way into the room.

It was a simple room. A bunch of unlit torches were in sconces around the room, and a single table in the middle had a sheet of parchment on it. Felix went up to it, and everyone else piled in around him, peering over his shoulder as he picked it up and started to read.

“It’s a puzzle.” Sora groaned. “Save me, bossman!”

“Yes. I will rescue you.” Erik deadpanned. “The escape to this fiendish room is… right behind you.”

Sora looked at the door suspiciously.

“There’s no way it’s that easy.” She said, edging her way over. “YA!” The bluette shouted, diving through the open door.

It stayed open.

“That was far more anti-climatic than I expected.” She said, walking back into the room.

Alex snorted, and Hazel rolled her eyes. Felix was busy reading the puzzle and thinking over it.

“We need to light the torches in a particular order.” Erik said, like it was some great revelation.

“What’s the number of perfection?” Felix asked, unable to puzzle through one part of the riddle.

“Seven.” Alexandria whispered.

Felix silently mouthed the words of the puzzle, then pulled out a notebook and started to write down his thoughts. He paced around the room while the others studied the puzzle, arguing over different lines.

“I think I’ve got it.” He said. “Look, this is the pattern.” 

“No no, you’ve got these two mixed up…” Erik said.

“No, Felix’s right.” Hazel said.

The four of them ignored Sora moaning in the corner and bickered over the puzzle, eventually coming to a consensus. Alex grabbed the one lit torch, and lit them in order.

The torches surged with flames once the last one was lit, and the five of them backed away from the roaring inferno, bumping into each other back to back in the middle of the room.

“I’m not sure about this.” Sora said.

“Look!” Erik shouted, unnecessarily. 

The flames flared and left the torches, whipping around the room like a fiery tornado. They then split apart into flaming words, hovering in the middle of the room.

“It’s a spell.” Alex whispered, her eyes frantically going over the words. 

Felix started to copy them down, but Sora grabbed his wrist.

“Do you want your notebook to turn into a spellbook?” She asked.

“Um. No.” Felix said, thinking about how his notebook got wet from earlier. Drying off several pages was one thing. If it was a spellbook, from what he understood, it would’ve just vanished on him, and taken all his notes with it.

“Read, memorize.” Alex whispered. “Grab the last few lines, we’ll work on putting it together later.”

“Can I rip a page out and write on that for like, a spell page instead of a spell book?” Felix asked.

“Yes, but expect to lose it.” Sora said. “It’ll be super offended to be made like that, and nobody really likes finding loose spells. Because they’re usually amateur work, so they’re completely ignored.”

The others were too intent on memorizing the spell.

“Does that still apply if we all write a little bit of it?” Felix asked.

“No…” Sora said slowly. “Not half a spell on a single piece of paper. But don’t try to be clever about it. Err… why is that?” She asked Erik, then slapped her hands over her mouth. “Never mind.” She mumbled through her fingers.

Felix wrote down the latter third of the spell, figuring that the early parts would be memorized by everyone else. The flames pulsed three times, then burst into dozens of embers. They floated around the room, then converged on the table. It lit on fire, and the entire room shifted around them. More torches appeared from the wall, and a new riddle appeared in the table. They bent over to study it for a minute.

“It needs the current spell.” Alex said after a short minute.

“Agreed.” Erik said. “Let’s learn this one first, then move on.”

“An escalating room!” Sora jumped and clapped her hands. “What fun!”

“What is it with wizards and fire?” Felix asked. Sora, Alex, and Erik stared at him, but Hazel was nodding in understanding. “Fire this, flaming that, every other thing is fire.”

The natives traded looks.

“I don’t think that’s the case.” Erik said, then shrugged. “Then again, maybe we’re just used to it.”

“Do we want to use this room?” Sora asked, looking around. Alex didn’t answer, already flicking her wand and muttering quietly.

“Eh… no chairs.” Erik pointed out. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like standing and working.”

Sora was already skipping out of the room by the second word, and popped her head back into the room a moment later.

“Over here!” She said. 

Only Erik and Felix wandered over, and Sora eagerly waved them over to an open door. It was an abandoned classroom, using larger than normal tables with a scattering of chairs.

“Sure, why not.” Erik said, and Felix shrugged.

Sure, why not?

They returned back to the room, right as Alexandria managed to get a small flame flickering off the end of her hand.

“Behold.” She tried to deadpan, but her ruined voice made it hard. “An amazing spell.”

“It took a bunch of first years less than 10 minutes to solve, it’s not like we’re going to get anything good. It’s one more spell than we knew earlier.” Erik pointed out, then hastily course corrected at the look on Alex’s face. “Sorry, didn’t mean to… rain on your parade.”

Felix groaned at the terrible joke. Sora grabbed a piece of parchment out of her bag, crumpled it up, and threw it at Erik.

“Booo.” She hissed. “Terrible joke. Boooooo!”

“Can we move this along?” Erik said. “Poor Odric sacrificed himself so we could all meet.”

Sora started to crack up at the comment, and soon all five of them were howling with laughter. Even Hazel was quietly chuckling, and they soon pulled up chairs and sat down around a table.

“Do we want to knock off the languages homework first?” Erik proposed, starting to take out his supplies. Alexandria shook her head.

“Coven first.” She whispered.

“Sure, coven first, any objections?” Erik said. Felix and Hazel just shrugged, and Sora nodded along.

“Cool. No objections to the six of us registering as a coven for school purposes?” Erik asked.

A round of head shaking occurred, even if Hazel’s was slow and hesitant. Erik pulled out a pre-filled form, with their six names on it.

“The only thing left is what we want to call ourselves.” He said.

“Morgana’s Minions.” Alexandria immediately hissed out, and Felix carefully didn’t stare. Was Alex… blushing!? Then everyone had ideas. Most of them were utterly terrible, but Erik dutifully wrote them down on the list. Merlin’s Mavericks, 13 Clovers, Seventh Circle, The Coven Coven, Oven Coven, The Breakfast Club, Wixens Important Teaching Coven Helpers, The Party, The Good Ladies’s Amateur Horticulture Association, The Bad Girl Coven, The Fellowship of the Ring, Wixen of the Round Table, Knights of the Round Table, Nevoc, a mashup of runes that might ruin any spell cast on it, Baker’s Dozen, The Incredible Talent Coven suggestion by Felix had Sora punch his arm and Alex practice the new flame spell too close to him, Laser Wolf, Fight Club, In Odric’s Honor, Shadow Seven, The Flying Circus, The Smallest Broom Racing Team, The Morsin Broom Racing Team, Six Short of Stravolux…

“Not everything needs to be about brooms.” Erik said after Sora’s fourth broom-related team name in a row. “Let’s try this whole democracy thing for a minute.”

“This is a little unfair to Vivian.” Alexandria whispered.

“I was the one suggesting homework, not ‘decide on our names’”  Erik pointed out. Alex crossed her arms and huffed, but gave in.

None of the names got more than two votes though, and everyone was getting frustrated. Sora argued loudly, which had Alexandria pounding the table in frustration when literally nobody could hear her.

“Wait! I’ve got it!” Sora jumped up, waving her finger around. “Morsin’s Monsters! See, cause you’re Morsin, you’re going to be a Morsin, we’re all kinda monsters… uh, not you two.” She directed the last comment towards Hazel and Felix.

If the name had been brought up at the start, Felix would’ve objected strongly. He wanted to be recognized as an equal, nevermind that he knew it wasn’t true. Too much American propaganda. However, they’d been arguing over something as stupid as the group name on school paper for way too long, and none of that was getting homework done, reading books, or anything productive.

“Fuck it.” Felix said, raising his hand. “Anything to get a name and move on.”

Hazel put her hand up, Sora had both her hands up before she grabbed Erik’s and lifted it up, and Alex eventually rolled her eyes.

“Fine.” She whispered. 

“That’s not a name I would’ve expected, but alright! We’re Morsin’s Monsters!” Erik wrote the name down with a flourish.