All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [116]
Mitch clapped him on the back. “Well done! You won it for us, Eliot.”
Amanda gave him a hug, blushed, and withdrew.
Robert nodded to Eliot. His eyes, however, warily locked on Jeremy as he climbed the last of the stairs and joined them.
Jeremy smiled like nothing had happened. “Excellent,” he said, and then added softer, “Sorry we got bunched up back there. No hard feelings, eh?”
“Sure,” Eliot said with a smug shrug.
“As long as we won,” Jeremy murmured, “what does it matter.”
Eliot didn’t need any Infernal senses to weigh Jeremy’s sincerity. It did matter. There was something driving Jeremy far beyond healthy competitiveness.
This wasn’t over between them. Not by a long shot.
Eliot glanced down through the jungle gym. His heart ached, hoping Jezebel was okay.
If he could have, he would gladly have taken her place—fought Van Wyck and the others—knowing he’d lose. It’d be worth it to spare her.
He could almost hear Jezebel telling him he was a “fool” for such thoughts.
But Eliot couldn’t help it. The only reason he’d come up here was to stop the match by winning it. To keep her safe.
She mattered to him . . . more than any stupid gym match . . . even more than Paxington.
30. There are four stages of expertise in the art of conjuration. First is simple molecular manipulation, which can heat or cool matter. The second stage is the movement of matter, i.e., basic telekinesis. Third is the transmutation of elements, which if the student has mastery of they may conjure items from thin air. NOTE: It is notoriously difficult to transmute into heavier elements, especially gold. The fourth stage is almost never attained: the creation of living matter such as plants, and only with extreme rarity, sentient animals. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 14, The Mortal Magical Families. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
32
BOY TROUBLE
Fiona sat on the edge of her seat. This was the most fascinating stuff in the world . . . no, that wasn’t right; it was the most fascinating stuff out of this world.
Miss Westin had finished her lectures on the magical families yesterday, and today had moved on to a new topic in Mythology 101. On the blackboards of Plato’s Hall were maps of the Purgatories, the Borderlands, and more places that she called the “Middle Realms” between Earth and the end of places known.
Fiona had always wanted to travel, and last summer she had seen Greece and the Bahamas. She’d even been in Paris.
These places were different, however. What would it be like to go to wander among the Lost Floating Gardens of Babylon? Snorkel among the ruins of Atlantis? Or find the Temple of the Fountain of Youth? Or glimpse dread R’lyeh?
Or maybe not. Her enthusiasm was tempered by her recent visit to the Valley of the New Year, where she’d almost gotten stuck forever. And her visit to the Borderlands near the Blasted Kingdom of Hell—that was a place she could do without ever seeing again.
“Travel to the Middle Realms is perilous for mortals,” Miss Westin lectured. “Humans were not meant to exist there. An analogy would be deep-sea diving or a journey to the moon. These things are possible, but complicated . . . and if mistakes are made, lethal.”
Fiona struggled to keep up, take quick notes while she tried to copy the map of the Butterfly Vales of the Fairylands.
She imagined herself there, splashing her toes in Gabriel’s Wishing Well and exploring the Cavern of Floating Lights that connected their world to hers—places just on the edge of imagination that beckoned.
“Some realms,” Miss Westin said, indicating the map, “are mere legend. For example, the Fairylands or the Land of Gray and Gold has never been visited by any human . . . or if they have, they have not returned.”
Fiona frowned at this and made a note.
Miss Westin pulled down a new blackboard covered with mountains among a Milky Way’s worth of stars. “Others, such as Heaven, seen here as portrayed by Dante Alighieri’s first crude map in his Paradiso—have not been visited by mortals since the