Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials: Books 1-3 Omnibus

by Shannon Mayer

  A freaking T-Rex, so big that our heads wouldn’t even touch the bottom of its belly.

  “We’re gonna die.”

  Chapter 14

  Wally’s voice drifted into my mind from the first day of the trials, which felt so damn long ago.

  “To date, in this century, there has never been a death by mauling as pertains to the T-Rex.”

  Regardless of the strongholds in place, and there didn’t look to be any, a real T-Rex was liable to kill people.

  …in this century…

  …never been a death…

  “It’s an illusion,” I said, clutching Ethan’s sleeve as he stared up at the monster, slack mouthed. “It has to be an illusion. It’s magic, like everything else. Wally said no one’s died from one of these in this century.”

  “It is magic, yes. We’re in the House of Wonder.” Ethan shook himself into movement and straightened the sheet of paper he’d fearfully clutched in his hand moments before. “Of course, it’s magic. We might not die, but we’ll fail.”

  “I’m less concerned with failing than dying, though that first challenge might’ve amounted to the same thing.”

  “Failing is not an option. We have to make it through. That’s the plan, right?” Ethan turned and ran for the cave while stuffing the sheet of paper into his pocket.

  “I’m sensing daddy issues.” I ran right beside him, holding the uncomfortably vibrating wand in a shaking hand. Another roar rumbled through the space, squashing all other sound and making my heart flutter.

  “I’ve prepared for this.” Ethan was muttering, and I got the distinct impression he was trying to bolster his confidence. “I’ve studied. I’ve practiced.”

  “There is no preparing for the size of this beast,” I said, my heart stopping dead when the huge head swung our way. The T-Rex regarded us from its small eyes, before bending forward and slamming us with a blood-freezing roar. “Its teeth are the size of a human foot.”

  “Yeah. I learned that in grade school.” He put on a burst of speed.

  I ran faster still, passing him, and made a beeline for that cave. “There’s a difference…between learning it…and living it.”

  The ground shook with the imprint of one massive foot carrying a whole lot of tonnage.

  “A big…difference.” Another foot. The beast was coming after us. “Every man…for himself!”

  I slid into the cave, feet first, as another footfall shook the ground, this one faster than the previous two. The fourth thud was faster still, the beast chasing its prey.

  I rolled, finishing the slide on my belly. The T-Rex swung its head down, faster than a creature that size should have been capable of moving, and chomped at Ethan. The enormous teeth just missed him. Screaming, Ethan ducked into the cave so fast, he slammed his head against the rock roof. He staggered and fell into me.

  He clutched his head and curled up, but I was already pulling him farther back into the recesses, a space too small for the huge reptile to reach. Frantic breathing filled the hollow silence left by the dinosaur.

  “Failing is not an option,” I said, replaying the memory of those huge teeth stained with blood and bits of flesh, snapping shut. “We might not die, but it’ll hurt like hell. Failing is definitely not an option. How do we bring it down?”

  “My head is pounding. You’ll have to do it.”

  “Nice try, gorgeous. My head has been pounding since this morning. How do we bring it down?”

  He fumbled for his pocket, whatever he’d read before running to the cave clearly forgotten.

  “I got it.” I dug my hand into his pocket and pulled out the piece of paper. Organized, typed directions filled the sheet, ending with “Notes.” In that space, various spells and details had been added in a surprisingly delicate hand. “Did your sister help you with this?”

  “I am literate,” he said dryly. “The best spells to use are at the bottom.”

  I was literate, too, but my handwriting looked like it had been scrawled out by a five-year-old with an attention problem.

  I muttered a few of the handwritten words—some foreign, like “Olumpah,” and some I understood, like “Levitate.” The wand spat sparks of blue, and I pointed it toward the wall.

  “So spells can just be common words?” A monstrous foot slammed down outside the cave, followed by a roar that filled our small space to bursting.

  Both of us grabbed our heads.

  “It’s not just anything. The words, intention, and wand movement work together, driven by your inner strength and power.” He pushed up a little and touched the bump forming on the side of his head. He looked at his fingertips, didn’t see blood, and glanced out of the cave. “Countless hours are spent learning spell work, and only the best can ever master it. Most people are merely proficient.”

  “Awesome. Well, I would like to be proficient enough to cause havoc. What do I say?”

  He sniffed and shook his head before taking a deep breath. “I’ve trained for this. I can do it in my sleep.”

  He lightly touched his head. He hadn’t trained for this when at anything other than a hundred percent. Welcome to real life, Wonder Bread.

  “Right.” I nodded in determination. Clearly, he wasn’t going to teach me to use magic without a little prodding. “Then jog on out there and start throwing some spells. I’ll be right behind you, with this tiny knife.”

  His gaze cut my way, and he watched me grab for my knife. He sighed. “Look, we can’t really practice in here or the spells will bounce off the walls and hit us.” I grimaced and directed the boom part of the wand toward the cave opening, where the T-Rex waited.

  I doubted the predators of old would’ve been so patient. Or tolerant.

  “You’re better at overall combat,” he went on. “I’m obviously better with the actual spells. So we’ll have to work together—”

  “That’s what some of us have been doing all along…”

  His blue eyes flared. “Do you want to win this, or not?”

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  Outside the cave, the T-rex shifted and lifted a foot. This one landed farther away, back toward its initial position. Its default setting, I guessed.

  “What we can do is this…” He licked his lips and crawled nearer the opening. “Use your—the wand. React with it how you would normally react with a knife. If you’d go for the eyes, or belly, aim and shoot the sparks. I’ll then follow it up with an actual spell.”

  “The eyes are much too small and far away for a target,” I said, my brain whirling, shedding off the panic of fighting a huge predator that had terrorized prehistoric earth. “The belly is covered in that thick skin. Are your spells more potent than foot-long teeth?”

  Ethan blinked and looked down at his wand. He hadn’t thought of that.

  “Who the hell is training you that you don’t already have a strategy?” I berated. “And what important branch of the government is he or she making a mockery of?”

  “It was my weapons instructor,” he replied.

  “Ever heard the saying, those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach?” I shook my head and crawled toward the mouth of the cave on hands and knees until the roof allowed me to stand, hunched over. I eyed the T-Rex, looking around the empty space, waiting for us to bring the fight to it.

  Whiskers, my pissed off bull, had nothing on this situation.

  “So, it’s either bring down the beast or get eaten?” I asked.

  “Or let time run out.” He braced a scratched hand against a rock, leaning heavily and squinting. I looked at my watch to see a timer ticking down. We had less than thirty minutes left to deal with the T-Rex. Ethan’s head was probably throbbing to the same beat as mine. “But I got the impression that time running out would be worse than losing to the beast. Something about lava…”

  My jaw dropped, and I spluttered before I managed to actually speak words. “Oh my God, what is wrong with magical people?”

  He took a deep breath. “Are you ready?�
�

  “No. You?”

  He released a shaky laugh. “Nope.”

  “But what choice do we have, right? We need to impress your daddy, right? We need to finish this and hope that Orin, Wally, and Pete are okay.”

  He sobered. “Yes,” he said softly. His pink tongue left a wet trail across his bottom lip. “Look,” he said, not looking over at me. “Between us, I’m glad it worked out this way. I’m glad we ended up in a crew. You’re insane, but you have a way about you. You make all this…bearable.”

  “Same,” I said, and it wasn’t a complete lie. Sometimes he was actually pretty okay.

  His grin said he heard everything I didn’t say in my voice. “We can’t all be team players, Wild. What fun is there in that? Some of us have been groomed to be separate, whether we like it or not.”

  And with those words, he pushed out of the cave and ran right. I surged after him a moment later, really wishing he’d given me a heads up.

  As expected, the T-Rex’s head swung around, tracking our movements. It roared as it stepped forward, on the chase once more. Ethan pivoted and headed back toward it at an angle.

  “Go,” he said, yelling at me. “Go, go!”

  “Go where?” The T-Rex gained speed, each step cutting the distance between us by a quarter.

  “I hate this,” I muttered, letting intuition kick in and changing my angle. “This is terrible. Why did I decide to come?” Not that I could have let Billy come instead, but I found myself wishing we’d cut and run like my dad had suggested.

  The T-Rex either didn’t catch my change in direction or wanted Ethan more, because it kept moving straight for him.

  “Levitate!” I heard, imagining him using a lovely little wand flick while standing stationary, like that woman in the last challenge.

  “It’s too heavy,” I said, changing my direction again and running back at him. He couldn’t get eaten yet. If he did, I’d have no chance. The T-Rex didn’t have a wand I could steal, and it wouldn’t care about my punches. “Use an attack spell!”

  “Surl-ah-age!”

  The word was garbled. I couldn’t see the accompanying flick. I had no idea what he was going for.

  The beast roared, a surprised, pain-filled sound. Its feet stomped and shuffled. Whatever that spell was supposed to do had worked.

  “Surlahage,” I shouted, aiming for an ankle, the easiest thing to hit, and flicking my wand in a clumsy fist. The movement was more a whip crack than a flick.

  A jet of white flew, arcing through the air and pinging into the dinosaur’s knee area. It blistered the tough skin. The T-Rex roared, though it didn’t sound as pained this time, and bent its opened mouth toward the ground. Toward Ethan.

  I swung the wand again, wanting to really explode that knee. “Surlage!”

  The second try was wrong, I could feel it. Everything felt wrong, from the movement to the instrument to the word itself.

  Gray-black light erupted from the wand this time, in a straight shot, flung with some vigor. It hit the beast’s ankle, as hoped, slashing a line of red.

  “Yes, yes!” I shouted, giddy from my accomplishment.

  The T-Rex roared, almost a howl of pain, before whipping its big head around to me. Its tiny yellow eye took me in. Oops.

  “Oh no! Oh no!”

  I turned and ran, unable to quell the instinct to flee something that big. The ground shook as the predator changed direction and charged.

  “Throw another spell. Throw another spell!” I shouted over my shoulder, probably not heard over all the commotion. “Take out its feet!” I flicked the wand over my shoulder, following my words. “Surblage. No, surfledge. Surlahedge!”

  Various streams of color zipped out. An explosion took me off my feet and flung me forward. I twisted in the air and landed on my side in time to see the last spell splat way up onto the dinosaur’s chest. The beast rocked back and forth, waving its little arms and roaring at the sky, teeth snapping together over and over.

  Another stream of light came at it from the other side. “Gar-gant-rain-ium.”

  “Gar-gant-rainium,” I said quickly, trying for the proper word flow and attempting an artful flick. It looked like something was stuck on the end of the wand and I was trying to flick it off. “Garg…antum. Dang it, I forgot the rain. Gargant-rain-ium!”

  I wasn’t great at remembering the words, they were too damn weird.

  The wand vibrated like a broken washing machine, and I nearly dropped it in discomfort. The beast roared as a spell hit it from behind. It turned, in time for my streams of brown and murky green to hit it broadside.

  “Those colors aren’t right,” I said, hopping up as a splash of red washed across the T-Rex’s side.

  It roared, worse than before, and shook its great head. Red gushed down its body, and I realized I’d opened that wound with one of those garbled spells.

  “Which one?” I murmured through my teeth, not running back to Ethan. Hitting it from both sides was better, as long as each of us could keep it from chomping down on the other. “Gargant-ium!” I slapped the wand at the air and more horrible vibrations ran up my arm. “Rain! Damn it. Gargantrainium!”

  Pus-yellow light flew out this time, hitting the creature’s hip. Blisters preceded smoke and then flame, curling up the T-Rex’s skin. A clear, vibrant green light flew toward it from the opposite side, exploding.

  The beast’s little arms clawed at the air as it shook its head again, its mighty mouth open and its body sagging a little. I could just barely see Ethan behind the thick leg, advancing with swagger, wand held out confidently, slipping into striking range to deliver his killing shot.

  “No, no, no!” I ran at him, all my senses firing. Fear driving my legs faster than they’d normally go. “Not so close—”

  Ethan shot out, his wand flicking gracefully, his body broad and powerful. His instructor had obviously been a complete idiot. He was making himself a perfect target.

  “Entitlement doesn’t work on a beast,” I yelled, readying my wand again. “Back away, Ethan! Get out of the striking range! It’s not ready to die!”

  A beautiful deep crimson stream flew through the air, slicing into the creature as it bent toward its target, its mouth open wide.

  “No! Surpledge!”—wand slash—“Geranium!”—wand slap—“Gargant-rain-um!” I was basically waving my wand like it was a whip now, something I actually knew how to do. It was helping...but not enough. The scene spilled out in front of me, a horror show I couldn’t escape.

  The beast moved faster than ever before as it shot toward a wide-eyed Ethan. The T-Rex’s teeth snapped closed on his middle with a sickening crunch.

  I sucked in a horrified breath as my murky, hideous spells slapped and slashed at the beast, one ripping a hunk of skin off its back, another peeling all the skin from its leg, and the third exploding against it. A tiny arm was flung off.

  The beast staggered, opening its mouth to roar. Ethan fell out to the side, stiff from fear-driven paralysis or the first death in this challenge. I was hoping for the former.

  I ran toward him, throwing up more spells haphazardly as I moved, dodging the clumsy feet of the agonized T-Rex. My spells hit home without the damage of the previous few.

  My wand waving. I was too panicked for Ethan. I hadn’t waved it as forcefully the last few times.

  “Help,” Ethan moaned as I got close. The T-Rex’s clawed foot slammed down, forty feet away, the creature howling in pain as it spun and clawed uselessly at itself.

  “You’re alive,” I said as I reached him, my relief short-lived. Four puncture marks in all, two in his front and two in his back, each round as a coffee mug. They almost met in the middle, and he was seeping blood and…other parts. He didn’t have long.

  This death was meant for me. I was sure of it.

  And Ethan had taken the blow.

  “We need to win,” I said, terror fueling me. “We need to win this so we can get you to a healer.”

  “I can�
�t feel my legs.” His eyes widened as he looked down. His arms pushed against the ground, as though he didn’t realize what he was seeing was a part of him and he wanted to get away from it.

  The tail swung overhead, enough to take me out had I been standing.

  “We gotta go.” I grabbed him under the arms and dragged him behind me to put distance between us and the creature. I didn’t know what else to do. “Give me a nasty spell. Nastiest you know.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Give me a spell!”

  “Darn-at-re. A. Dis-a-trium.”

  “What happened to the spells with actual words?” The T-Rex’s tail whipped the other way and it roared, sounding like it was so through with this crap. I knew how it felt. “Here we go. Give me your wand. It felt better than this one…”

  “Wands…intimate.”

  “Well then, we’re about to get intimate.” I snatched his wand out of his hand, looked at the stolen one in my other hand, and decided screw it.

  The creature came at me, its mouth open and hell in its eyes.

  “Darn-a-trium. Ah. Dis-a…trum.” That wasn’t right, but I flicked both wands, anyway.

  A stream of poo-colored brown magic came out of the instructor’s wand, and baby puke green magic came out of Ethan’s. Both hit the T-Rex on its right leg, a little higher than I’d intended, but nearly at the knee. Red holes opened up in its scaly hide before an explosion of fire shot out. Heat and light and propulsive energy slapped me, pushing me off my feet for the second time and flinging me back. My head knocked the ground and black spots swam within my vision.

  The T-Rex’s roar was soaked through with horrible pain. I pushed to my elbows as its body hit the ground. Half of its leg had been blown off, blood spray coating the dirt.

  My stomach pinched and bile rose in my throat. These challenges weren’t for the faint of heart.

  “Terrible spell work,” I heard, a pain-filled, wet, gargled whisper. A smile covered Ethan’s face, and he coughed up a wet laugh.