“Most certainly,” answered one of the dwarves, tapping the shard of rusted copper jutting out of his head. Ion quickly wished he was a dwarf, maybe then his metal jaw wouldn’t have been so weird. “Glad to finally meet you, Lady Vinya. Mother sends her regards.”
“Ah, yes, your mother was a great tinkerer, I recall,” she said. “I hope she’s taught you some of her techniques. Well, I suppose class should be under way.” She snapped her fingers, and six deer strolled out of the rain and into the classroom. They were grey and huge, with antlers that twisted into the air in a most unorganized fashion. Each held something sparkly in their mouths.
“Each stag carries with them two pieces of jewelry,” said Vinya, “one for you and one for the student who shares your anvil. In my many years of experience, Relic Composition is best learned by physical creation and dissection, as opposed to flipping through the pages of a book. So today, we’re going to skip the lectures and jump right in to making your very first relic.”
A gust of excitement passed through the classroom, where everyone but Ion gasped. Perhaps he would have, had he known what a relic was.
A deer stopped beside him and grunted, as though it couldn’t have been more annoyed with its job.
“Take the jewels,” Oceanus said, nudging Ion toward the stag. “Go on…”
He looked back at her, his lips pursed. “Just give me a second!”
The stag was dripping wet and smelled of unwashed dog. Its eyes, though innocent, certainly didn’t make up for the mess of razor-sharp antlers growing out the top of its head. Wearing his most disgusted face, Ion reached out to the deer, whispering, “Nice deer…nice, pretty deer…you don’t eat faces, right?” before snatching away the two necklaces dangling out its mouth. But before he could even turn around, Oceanus yanked the gold necklace from his hand, leaving him with the silver one and the glimmering emerald that hung from it.
The last of the deer clip-clopped their way out of the classroom, and Vinya stepped down from her podium. “Relics have two purposes,” she said, “to enliven or entrap. In wearing or holding a relic that enlivens, a user could become blessed with a rush of courage, or a burst of charisma, or even a handful of fire. These abilities and their level of affect are determined simply by what ingredients are stored within the relic.”
“How is anything supposed to be stored in this?” asked a bald-headed dwarf at the front of the class. He held out his hand, and the ruby ring sitting in his palm gave a sparkly wink.
Vinya grabbed the ring from his hand, and said ever-so-sweetly, “Like this, my dear,” before aiming the ring at the dwarf and watching as—in a mess of churning flesh—he was sucked into the confines of the ruby.
Everyone gasped. Gertrude screamed. Oceanus pulled a notebook out of her satchel and started writing down everything she was witnessing. Meanwhile, Ion wasn’t sure if he was supposed to clap, gasp, or run away in complete and utter fear.
“That was amazing!” said the Thwart brothers.
“Is he dead?” whimpered a giant behind Ion, who apparently hadn’t brushed his teeth in months.
Vinya laughed. “Of course he’s not dead!” She held the ring out for all to see. There, frozen in the ruby as if he was stuck in a block of red ice, was the bald-headed dwarf. “Relics are given certain abilities by use of certain ingredients—simple things like a leaf of mint, a scroll of cinnamon, a tail of a rat,” Vinya explained. “But if the ingredients are of a living kind—a dwarf for instance—the relic will not grant its user special abilities. Instead, the relic will serve only as a prison for that which was consumed. Those, my dears, are called entrapment relics.”
Hands flew up in all directions, with one question fired right after the other.
“Could you entrap a six-legged liger?” asked a dwarf.
“What about a baby six-legged liger?” asked a giant.
“What about baby brothers?”
Ion glared at Oceanus.
Vinya closed her eyes and sat the ring down on the anvil in front of her. There was a flash, and next moment, the bald-headed dwarf was back in his place—full-sized, a little shaken, but no longer frozen.
“Yes, I’m sure a relic could hold a baby brother,” Vinya said. “But for the sake of my job, please refrain from trying such a thing.”
“How did you even do that?” Oceanus asked, incredulous. “The logistics—even for a god—should be impossible!”
Vinya approached their anvil, which made Ion rather uneasy. He liked Vinya, but watching her teach class from afar was different than having her loom over his desk like some ominous, overgrown tree that doled out grades god-style.
She smiled pleasantly and said, “Impossibilities are only possibilities not yet conquered by the determined. Filling a relic with an ingredient—whether it be a ball of yarn or a hundred-headed hydra—does not require power. It requires determination. However, I advise all freshmen at the Academy to resist any urge to entrap a living soul just yet. The result of not entrapping with enough determination, or understanding of what you’re doing, could end in a grotesque, deformed failure that would affect both the entrapper and the entrapee. And we don’t want that now do we, my dears?”
Grotesque, deformed failure? Ion looked over at Oceanus, who was bent over her notebook, writing down every word Vinya spoke. Her hand popped up into the air, but she had learned her lesson from earlier, so this time, she waited to be called on.
“Yes, my dear?” Vinya asked.
“What type of deformities are we talking here?” Oceanus asked, placing the tip of her quill thoughtfully to her chin. “Arms growing out of heads? Tentacles instead of legs?”
Vinya laughed. “My dear, a bad entrapment could never cause an arm to grow out of a head. But sprouting tentacles is common, yes. And claws. And horns. And these funny little suckers that grow out of the entrapper’s forehead. Those are a disaster to clean up, let me tell you.”
Vinya pushed onward with a list of other possible deformities, both common and rare, should the entrapper not be entrapping correctly. By the time she had stopped talking, a giant, tentacle-wielding, sucker-faced, bat-winged monster was walking around in Ion’s head. Perhaps entrapping wasn’t for him.
“…so that is why you should stick with inanimate objects to fill your relics,” Vinya continued. “For now, at least.” She returned to her podium and looked down at the students with her smile suddenly dampened. “I believe our hour and a half together has come to a close. I guess I did more talking than I thought I would. Anyway, have a good day, and keep out of the rain! Perfect weather for a nasty cold.” The room erupted with the cluttered noise of books, papers, and quills being feverishly thrown into backpacks. “And don’t forget your jewels! They are yours now, and by the end of the month, I want to see each of you with a working enlivened relic. On the way out, one of my lovely deer will give you a list of common ingredients you could use to fill your relic. And remember, my dears: it doesn’t have to do anything special, just make it do something.”
Ion looked over his necklace—the silver chain was light in his hand, and the green of the emerald twinkled as though a light was stored within it. He tucked it into the pocket of his tunic and instead smiled up at Vinya, who smiled in return, and then he zipped out of the classroom after Oceanus.
After they collected their scrolls from the filthy deer’s mouth, Oceanus and Ion started their walk across the Jovian Fields. The rain was only faint now, but the air was thick with humidity, and the earth was definitely still muddy. Stryker Montgomery, the dwarf who Vinya had entrapped in his own ring, walked in front of Ion and his sister. The other students were huddled around him, their eyes large with wonder as they hung on his every word.
“It was dark,” he recounted in an astonished whisper. “Dark and cold and lonely. I could hear what everyone was saying, but I-I couldn’t move, or breathe, yet…I didn’t have to.”
The Jovian Fields grew distant behind them, and the sounds of their muddy footsteps sq
uished through the entrance hall of the fortress. Oceanus stopped Ion at the foot of a Nepia statue colored a deep blue, and asked Ion if he’d like to join her for a reading session in the Borean Study. Ion remembered butt cramps and quickly refused.
For the first time, Ion wandered down the halls of the Achaean Academy by himself, looking for familiar statues, or paintings, or even chips in the walls—anything to indicate he was heading in the right direction. Purple tiles glazed the walls of the corridors near the Dorms, but the ones he strolled down now were nothing but black. Thirty minutes of wandering later, and Ion was still no closer to the Dorms. He treaded down a hall without any windows that was lit in silvery hues thanks to a few floating candles.
He couldn’t make out the walls, the floors, not even his own steps.
The air became cold and unforgiving, until he could see his own breath. His heart had been pounding so hard in his chest he could hardly hear anything around him, but when he stopped to gather his bearings, he heard a noise coming from the hall behind him.
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
It swept back and forth, like the lazy sweep of a broom. Ion swallowed and kept walking, this time a bit faster. He hoped he’d imagined it. It sounded so close. His steps fell quicker and quicker, but the noise was always behind him.
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
It was right on his heels now, and it was certainly no broom. No, it was a dress—he just knew it—the skirts of a dress dragging the floor behind him.
He stopped again, unaware of how loud he was breathing. There was a slow swoosh and then silence. Whatever had been following him…was now standing in his shadow. He turned, slow and unsure, and his eyes went wide.
There was nothing. The hall was dim and empty, save but a few unsettling shadows and a spider scurrying across the floor at his feet, which he wasn’t particularly pleased with either.
“Who knew you were just as crazy as Oceanus,” he grumbled to himself.
And then it came...
Swoosh.
Swoosh.
Down the hall, where darkness had taken what the candlelight could not, there was a flicker of white. And from out of the shadows, waltzing carelessly as though to bask in the music of silence, came a white, silken dress. It danced alone in the scarce, silver light, growing closer and closer with each bow and twirl, until finally it stopped cold…right before Ion. There were no arms, or legs, or neck to be seen. Instead, there was only a head, which hovered, eyeless, earless, and lipless, above a ruffled collar. Ion stood there, frightened to his very core, but refused to move, or even blink. A crack split vertically down the middle of the spirit’s face, and from out of its gaping, toothless mouth came a moan as shrill and cold as a blizzard’s gale.
“Ioooooooooooooooon!”
Ion’s footsteps echoed through the halls as he ran. His legs carried him, fast and strong, until corridor after corridor was left in his wake, and the spiral staircase to the Dorms came into view. He charged up the stairs, three at a time, locked himself in his room, and dove under the sheets of his bed, cowering as though he had just…well, as though he had just seen a ghost.
Ion never liked the first day of school. It always seemed so bothersome—getting to know your teachers, memorizing all those schedules, and, of course, having to make friends with the smelly kid who sits next to you in math class. But standing before a dancing ghost whose face splits in two made him long for those old, normal days, when a smelly kid in math class was the worst of his problems.
Lying in bed, Ion tried convincing himself that he’d imagined it all. These sweets must be getting to me, he thought, bundled up underneath his blankets, surveying his room for any spontaneous dress sightings. Maybe the elves put a spell on me. Or maybe that lightning I shot fried some brain cells. But he couldn’t believe any of it. They were excuses and Mother had always told him about excuses—they only hid the truth for so long.
Ion shuddered. Of all the infestations a school could have, of course, the school he’d had no choice but to stay at would be infested with ghosts.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AN ELF, A BATTLE, AND A BANSHEE
For the next two weeks, Ion remained on high alert.
Every night before bed, he’d check behind his curtains, underneath his mattress, and deep within his pillowcases. He wasn’t sure if ghosts who wore dresses and knew his name liked hiding inside pillowcases, but he thought it wouldn’t hurt to make sure. Despite all this checking, however, (and keeping close to the giants or even Sentinels when he’d walk through the academy halls), Ion never saw the floating dress again.
Thankfully, there was plenty to distract from the ghost’s absence.
Oceanus was right: the Achaean Academy was nothing like the schools Ion had been to. Everything—the classes, the teachers, the students—it all seemed like a dream. Sure, he had seen his fair share of cyclopes and sorcerers on the streets of Protea, but there was something so surreal about sitting beside an eleven-foot-tall giant named Gregory at lunch and watching him devour plate after plate of lava-spewing Molten Cakes while sprites flew overhead like playful mosquitoes.
Thursdays meant Racial Studies class, and Racial Studies class meant an hour and a half of Posey Straudums—or Mr. Poe, as he had his students call him. Mr. Poe was a sprite. But not a very good one, he’d admit, simply because he utterly despised flying. As the instructor for Racial Studies, he sat his fat, blue bottom on a rocker at the front of the class, which sat atop another rocker, and another rocker after that, just so he could be on the same eye level as his students. Mr. Poe would sway back and forth on his tower of rockers, talking rather slowly, with his glasses propped on the edge of his nose. Every so often, he’d stop rocking and order one of his pages—a group of young and unlucky sprites—to fetch him a glass of sugar water (sprites loved sugar water) and maybe a book or two about the subject he was rambling on about.
Listening to Mr. Poe’s lectures about the hundreds of different races was definitely insightful—and a tad boring—but Ion would take boredom over being surrounded by woodland creatures any day. He still hadn’t gotten used to the deer in Relics class, mostly because the deer still hadn’t been washed. “You’d think Vinya would give them a bath,” he’d say to his sister, to which she wouldn’t reply. But Vinya was so nice and smiley she probably didn’t have the heart to tell the deer they stank in the first place. She was always beaming like the sun and joking about things she shouldn’t be joking about, like spontaneous relic combustion—the leading cause of relic-related deaths in the northern hemisphere. “I bet its discovery came as quite a bang!” she had joked...to mixed reviews.
Even better than no ghost sightings, Spike hadn’t spoken to Ion in weeks. Ever since the “bolt thing”, Spike had reduced his contact with Ion to a few daily glares. Sure, these glares burned with unmitigated hatred and anger, but Ion tried to ignore that fact, so he could enjoy his Glow Cakes in peace. The glares came mostly during the physical training classes.
Once, during Weapon Wielding, Ion somehow found himself tangled in his own throwing net. “Fantastic job, my dear!” Vinya shouted. “Thinking outside the box!”
A glare from Spike.
Another time, Ion wound a dust devil into existence in Elemental Essentials, and shortly after it raced uncontrollably out of the coliseum to terrorize a group of spying nymphs. Vinya clapped and said, “That was a fantastic funnel, my dear! Now, let’s see it again, but this time, let’s try not attacking innocent bystanders.”
A glare from Spike.
On a day when Ion hadn’t yet seen Spike or felt his glare, he walked to the Mirrored Hall and sat at the Guardians table, right across from Oceanus. The benches around them were mysteriously empty, besides a few nymphs bent over their books. The silence was unusual, but Ion was just happy Gregory the Giant wasn’t there. He smelled.
“Where is everyone?” Ion asked his sister, who was fixed on the pages of a book called Come What May, Keep the Outerw
orld Humans At Bay.
“Weekend,” she grunted, refusing to look up. “No Classes. Sunny outside.”
Ion plucked a blue Glow Cake from her plate and plopped it into his mouth. He sighed in delight as he chewed through the moist, blueberry-flavored cake. But he hadn’t come here to eat. No, today Ion came for answers.
Once Ion was done chewing, he cleared his throat, and said, “I...I have a question.”
Oceanus drew her eyes up from her book. “Just the one?” she asked. “And you’re sure it won’t be followed by other questions? Questions that’ll be just as annoying as the first?”
He looked away, so as to lie more efficiently. “Just one. I promise.”
She sighed in exasperation and slid her book away. Ion couldn’t have been more surprised. There was nothing Oceanus loved more than books, so getting her to put them down without being mauled was an impressive feat, especially for him. When Ion was much younger, he dared interrupt her reading of a book called Gnomes & Dwarves and Why They’re Short and afterward, Ion was rushed to the hospital for a broken pointer finger.
It never quite pointed the same.
“Well then,” said Oceanus, “what’s the question?”
“I...I was...I was wondering if, perhaps, you’ve, you know, ever…seen things around here like…like ghosts?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious?”
He nodded feverishly.
“I haven’t seen any,” she said, sounding suspicious, “nor have I heard of any. But I must admit, it’s not a ridiculous idea. These halls are ancient. Actually, it would be absurd if after all these centuries, the Acropolis wouldn’t play host to a ghost or two.”
Ion looked at the mirrored walls around him. “How old is this place?”