“Oh my God,” Ulrykah said pulling her keys with her mace keychain from her pocket.
“RUN!” Zachary yelled. Ulrykah flipped the safety off her mace and sent a stream into the eyes and mouths of the two hydra heads. It hissed and pulled the snapping heads back, but not the foot. Zach aimed a spell at it and managed to burn off a few scales but lost ground as the beast lunged against the door.
“Since when can hydras turn invisible?” Ulrykah yelled.
“Get out of here!” Zachary yelled back as his feet slipped another few inches and the door opened wider. Two more greenish purple heads shoved their way through the opening. Zach didn’t appear strong enough to hold the door himself (Ulrykah wondered if what she’d heard about the inhuman strength of lizard people was true; now wasn’t the time to ask, though). The hydra would escape and eat him, and then catch Ulrykah before she could make it to the top of the stairs.
“Close your eyes!” she yelled.
She pointed her wand at one set of yellow eyes and screamed the light spell. It came out in such a bright blast that even she had to squint against it. The hydra screeched and reeled backward; Zach pushed the door shut.
“Grab the lock!” he said. Ulrykah rushed over and pulled the padlock from his belt. The hydra beat against the door, pushing the latch out of alignment.
“It won’t line up!”
Zachary pushed back harder, and for a brief moment, the metal pieces on the door and wall aligned. Ulrykah slammed the lock in and clicked it, tearing off the end of one of her thumbnails on the stone doorframe.
“Got it!” she yelled.
Zach slowly stepped away from the door.
“Okay. Good job, team.”
They both jumped as the hydra thudded against the door.
“Let’s go,” Zach said and reached for Ulrykah’s hand. She took it; it didn’t feel as odd as she had thought it might.
SKREEEEEEEECH!!
Ulrykah flinched as the sound of ripping metal assaulted their ears. They looked back to see one of the hinges pop off and fall to the floor.
“Got any tricks up your sleeve?” Ulrykah asked as she pulled her phone out to dial the campus emergency number. The campus sentinels would be able to handle a hydra, and they might even arrive in time to save them.
“Maybe,” Zachary said, a muttered a spell at his wand. A reddish light came out of it, but instead of shining like a flashlight, it created the outline of a trapezoid, about a foot long.
“What is that?”
“A knife. You really should run now.”
Ulrykah considered it as the operator came on the line, but there were so many steps, and she’d been winded just walking down them.
“What’s your emergency?”
“There’s a hydra in the dungeon tunnel under Graeme Hall.”
“Repeat that, please?”
“A F------ HYDRA!” she yelled. Then, to Zach, she squeaked out, “I don’t think you can kill it with just that.”
“I’m not so sure about that myself,” Zachary said, though most of his response was drowned out by another screech of the hydra’s claws against the door.
“Are you safe?” the operator asked.
“Not for long. I can’t outrun it,” Ulrykah said. “Definitely not up like two hundred steps.”
“Give me your wand,” Zach said.
She did, and Zach cast a light orb and sent it into the air above them, and then cast the same spell he’d used on his own wand. Her blade glowed green.
“We’ll have someone down there in a few minutes.”
“I don’t think we have many minutes.” She ignored the operator as she told Ulrykah to remain calm, et cetera, and waved her light knife through the air.
“Can you get to a safe location?” the operator asked.
“That’s weird, since you’re the green one, and I’m the red one,” Ulrykah said to Zachary, who gave a tight smile in response.
“I need you to stay on the line—” the operator said.
Another hinge popped off.
“I need to put my phone down.” Ulrykah slid her cellphone into her back pocket and retrieved her mace from her jacket. She held her wand blade tightly in the other hand.
“Stand behind me,” Zachary said.
“Okay.” Ulrykah sniffed and blinked against the tears forming in her eyes.
Stop that! I need to be able to see.
“Miss, are you there?” asked the muffled voice from her pocket.
The door began to bend outwards from the top.
“Come on, gimme a clear shot,” Ulrykah said, squeezing her weapons to keep her hands from shaking.
A long neck thrust out as a forepaw crushed the door further. Ulrykah maced the eyes. Zach ducked and swiped upward beneath it with his knife; violet blood sprayed over him, and the neck went limp.
“Look out!” Ulrykah cried as a second and third neck darted forward. Zach leapt to one side, and Ulrykah ran back up a few steps.
“Son of a bitch!” Zach yelled and sliced into a face—one that had nearly taken a chunk out of his bleeding forearm. Ulrykah cursed her cowardice and sprayed both heads, then praised her instincts as the other head lunged, snapping at her—but couldn’t quite reach; the monster strained against the metal, but its body was still trapped in the tunnel. When it lunged a second time, shrieking hideously, she kicked its underside with the toe of her boot sending it upward and back. Zach, having dispatched the head that had injured him, raced to her side in time for the third strike and sliced the head nearly off.
They only had time to take a breath before the door was finally ripped free, and the now-two-headed and fully-clawed beast tore into the hall. These eyes were barely open—likely they were the ones Ulrykah had sprayed before, but she had no way of knowing how much its eyesight was now impaired. It didn’t have any trouble finding them, as the two remaining heads came straight at them, likely guided by the smell of Zachary’s blood. They ducked, and she lost her balance, rolling down the few steps to the floor, safely away from the mouths but not the feet. She skidded to the darkest corner of the hall near the locked door to the labs. If only she had the key! But getting in there would be impossible. The only way to run would be straight past the hydra’s body and down the tunnel, and then maybe squeeze through the gate. She was tiny—it might be possible and a better option than getting cornered in the cramped hall as the monster advanced.
Zach was yelling a string a curses—she didn’t stop to look back as she launched herself over the remains of the door and past a rear leg. She slid to a stop, spun around, and jammed her blade into the foot, slicing off three of its toes. The blade cut easily and cleanly. The monster tucked its damaged foot under its body and swung its tail. Ulrykah leapt over it but was trapped against the wall as it swung back. She angled her blade down and away from her body, catching the tail as it pinned her against the wall. She coughed against the feeling of having about half the air knocked out of her lungs, ignored the burning in her shoulder where it had hit the wall, and held the knife firm—the harder the monster pressed, the further the knife cut, until it had sliced the tail clean off. Now free of its weight, Ulrykah leapt away, but not before the undamaged back foot struck her, slicing open her jeans and her skin below her left knee. She hobbled backward, screaming,
“ZACH! ZAAACH!”
She only noticed that the beast’s body had gone limp when she saw Zachary leap over it and run to her side. She had been leaning against a wall to stay upright, slowly sliding downward as her usable leg gave way to nerves.
“Oh man, I’m so glad you’re not dead,” Zach said, crouching beside her. “I thought it had gotten you.”
“You thought I was gonna let some sewer lizard get me?” she choked out through her tears.
“Hydras are no joke,” he said for something to say as he examined her leg through the rips in her blood-soaked jeans.
“No shit? Okay, granted, if you hadn’t been here, it might have a little trickier…�
�� she said to distract herself from fear of how serious her injury might be.
Zach tilted his head forward and raised his scaled brows.
“Really?”
Ulrykah gave half a shrug but then met his gaze and tried to smile as her leg throbbed.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“I don’t see any bone, and it’s not spraying blood everywhere, so I don’t think it’s that deep, but we’ll let the experts take a look when they get here,” he said, pulling off his sweatshirt and turning it inside out. “How do you feel? Any tunnel vision?”
“Very funny.”
“No, really,” he said, pressing the soft fleece against her wound and tying the arms to keep it on. “Do you feel like you’re going to pass out?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Good. Breathe deeply, okay?”
Ulrykah nodded and followed his directions, trying not to imagine what her leg must look like.
“Thanks for not letting it kill me. That would have sucked,” she said, leaning into his personal space and wrapping her arms around his torso. He put his free arm lightly around her and patted her hair.
“Out of the frying pan, into the fire,” he muttered.
Ulrykah pulled back just enough to look into his yellow eyes.
“I may not be able to walk, but I still have plenty of energy left, so if it’s gonna turn out that you’re a bad lizard man, just let me know, and I’ll kick your ass now.”
Zach blinked; a filmy membrane receded from his eyeballs just after his eyelids.
“Ew, that’s weird,” Ulrykah exclaimed. “I mean, weird interesting, I mean… I’m sorry, that was rude. I blame blood loss.”
He chuckled.
“Well, you’re not spurting blood, but the eyelid thing is usually to a shock to most people at first. Great party trick, though. Kids love it.”
“Is that how you get the kids into your creepy van?”
“Okay, that frying-pan-fire thing was a joke—a bad one, it’s just, you know, the hydra’s a lizard, I’m a lizard… people are usually creeped out by the lizard thing, so I just turn it into a joke… never mind.”
“I don’t think it’s creepy, as long as you’re not a creep.”
“Definitely not a creep,” he said.
“Good. What does your tongue look like?” she asked to distract herself from the pain—and because she hadn’t gotten a good look at it earlier and was genuinely curious.
“What?” he said, his lip curling a bit in either annoyance or confusion—Ulrykah couldn’t tell which.
“Okay, you can’t say you do the eyelid thing to make kids laugh and then get offended when I ask about your tongue.”
“Oh, really?” he said, now smiling.
“Really—it’s a rule.”
He stuck his thin, slightly pointed but otherwise very human looking tongue out a couple inches and waggled it at her.
“It’s pretty normal,” he said. “Although, I do have the ability to appreciate the unique flavor palate of horse flies.”
“Okay, I still can’t tell when you’re joking, so please tell me you are.”
“Totally joking,” he said through a laugh. “Oh, your face just then was great!”
Now Ulrykah stuck her tongue out—and quickly pulled it back in as he leaned down to look her in the eyes. They were still very close, arms lightly resting on each other’s backs.
Is it weird that we’re still kind of hugging? Ulrykah wondered. And does he like hugging me because I’m a girl, or because he’s cold-blooded?
“Hello?” came the muffled voice from her pocket.
“Oh yeah,” Ulrykah said, and pulled her phone out. “We’re still here,” she told the operator. “We’re both alive, but we’re kind of bleeding, and hey, you bleed red, too! It just occurred to me—What? No, they’re just flesh wounds. Sorry, I may be going into shock…”
“I’m so behind,” Ulrykah whined, sinking further into the pillows piled up on her bed between her back and the rough stone wall and trying not to move her leg, which, after a couple days of magical ministrations, was healing well, but still sensitive.
“Stop that,” Rav said from his seat on her absent roommate’s bed, where he was flipping through Michelle’s philosophy textbook. “You got extensions on everything.”
“Yeah, and if you need another, all you have to do it look at your professors with big sad PTSD eyes and ask for another,” Dan pointed out.
“I guess so,” Ulrykah said.
“I guess so,” Rav teased.
“So, I’ve been avoiding telling you this while you were in the infirmary,” Dan said, “but James was making out with some girl at that party… and they’re dating now.”
Ulrykah leaned her head against the wall and whined.
“If only the hydra had attacked the party,” she said.
“Hey!” Dan exclaimed. “I was there, too, remember?”
“I didn’t mean that, obviously,” Ulrykah said, “and I don’t even think I mind that much. It’s just disappointing because when you were hoping someone actually cared that you exist, and then it turns out that they mostly don’t… you know. It’s whatever.”
“So what’s the deal with the groundskeeper?” Dan asked through a mouthful of Doritos.
“Oh, well, he’s actually super cute and nice, and he visited me in the infirmary… but he’s an employee, so, even if he does like me, which I can never actually tell, that would be kind of against the rules for him.”
“Rules shmules,” Rav said.
“Actually, if he broke that one, he could get fired,” Ulrykah said. “And it’s really hard for lizard people to find employment, despite that whole ‘lizard people secretly rule the world’ thing. Turns out that’s just a rumor.”
“Or that’s what he wants you to think,” Dan said. Ulrykah shrugged. Talking kind of hurt her head, so she didn’t feel like arguing, even playfully.
“Hey, Rika?” someone said. Ulrykah looked past Dan to see her roommate, Michelle, standing in the doorway. Rav slowly closed the book and set it back on the bed.
“Uh, hey, what’s up?” Ulrykah said.
“I brought you my spellwriting notes,” she said, and handed Ulrykah several sheets of paper. “I like to write them by hand because it’s easier to draw the tridecagrams. I hope it’s legible.”
Ulrykah glanced over the notes, not because she was especially concerned about being able to decipher them, but because that was the most Michelle had spoken to her at once all semester, and she didn’t want to stare awkwardly until she could get herself to respond politely. Michelle had never been mean, she had just seemed like she couldn’t be bothered—until now.
“Yeah, they look great. Thanks,” Ulrykah said.
“Good! Um, so, we’re gonna be watching ‘Bridesmaids’ tonight in the lounge if you wanna come… around seven?”
“Um, yeah, sure, I’ll be there.”
“Great, see you then!” Michelle said and seemed ready to disappear again, when she stopped, looked at her bed, looked at Rav, who waved sheepishly, and grabbed her calculus book, before making a quick exit.
Rav reopened Michelle’s philosophy book.
“Look at you,” he said. “You put good energy out, you get it back.”
“I killed a hydra. Is that putting out positive energy?” Ulrykah asked.
“People usually feel like not getting killed by a hydra is positive, so… I guess?” Dan said.
“At least I didn’t have to go out of my way to get people to like me, or anything,” Ulrykah said. Dan smiled and reached for the TV remote.
“So, One Piece or One Punch Man?” he asked.
“Sailor Moon?” Ulrykah suggested.
“One Punch Man it is,” Rav said.
“Hey, I killed a hydra!” Ulrykah complained.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” Dan said.
A twinkling noise from Ulrykah’s phone was just audible above the sound
of the TV—it was a text from Zach:
Hey, how are you feeling?
Ulrykah suppressed a grin as she texted back:
Pretty good, actually.
A native Texan, Audrey Andrews is an author and editor who presently makes her rent by herding cats with PhDs. She holds a BA in English from Rutgers University, and an EdM in ESL education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education.
Nannette’s Tale
A Schooled in Magic story, set directly after The School of Hard Knocks.
During Emily’s second year at Whitehall, depicted in Study in Slaughter, she shared a room with Lin, a mousy girl who was later revealed to be a spy from Mountaintop School. When Emily herself travelled to Mountaintop, the Head Girl - Nanette - was eventually revealed to be Lin, an agent of the enigmatic Aurelius. Nanette attempted to stop Emily from interfering with Aurelius’s plans, only to find herself holding a Death Viper. Emily saved her life, but had to leave her foe behind. Wounded, on the verge of death, Nanette fled Mountaintop ...
... Unaware that, as she tried to find shelter, she might encounter someone worse.
Nannette’s Tale
In hindsight, the memories mocked her.
Nanette had been sixteen - barely sixteen - when she’d met Aurelius for the first time. The Administrator rarely had time for first-year students, particularly those of no good family. It wasn’t until she found herself in his office, staring expulsion right in the face, that she’d had a chance to study him for the first time. He was a man of power, a man so sure in his own power that he had no need to play dominance games with anyone. And part of her wanted that for herself.
And so she squared her shoulders, looked him right in the eye, and told him the truth.
“She treated me badly, sir,” she said, when Aurelius pointed out that her former mistress was currently in the infirmary. “And I wanted to get her off my back.”
Aurelius raised his eyebrows. “And how did you do it?”
Nanette stumbled through a complex explanation. Ophelia - the girl who’d been supposed to mentor Nanette, in exchange for service - had been fond of pinching her at the slightest excuse. Nanette had put together a spell that not only transferred the pain to the older girl, but magnified it. Ophelia had pinched Nanette’s upper arm, hard enough to leave bruises. Ophelia must have felt as if her arm had been caught in a pressure spell.
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