Chapter Text
12 Suher, Year 618
Strider, Jamilah, Momoko, Griffin, Reya, Tadashi, Barold, Deryn, Asami, Eowyn, and Jun all gathered at Jamilah’s place for a much-needed reunion. The last seven years or so had seen each of them on separate journeys (more or less) and they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Now they were reuniting over a new book series that Jamilah had found and wanted them all to read together. Little did they know, this story would be a true test of sanity, and not all of them would be able to make it all the way to the end.
(Author’s note: None of them die; they just get so fed up with the story that they nope out of the book group.)
They had a single copy of the book, and they decided they should pass it around in a circle and take turns reading. The book’s cover featured a skinny, awkward-looking boy on a broomstick surrounded by pillars and magical glyphs and such. The title read William Baker and the Wise Guy’s Rock.
“An encouraging start,” Barold said dryly.
Reya’s eyes traced down to the bottom of the front cover. “‘By Jolene Galbraith.’ Huh. Kind of sounds like an Outlander name.”
“How could she be an Outlander?” Tadashi countered. “All the Outlanders have been killed.”
(Author’s note: Or have they?)
The first chapter was not about the titular character, but rather about his shitty non-magical relatives who would end up becoming his begrudging legal guardians. The prose was not exactly kind to said relatives, making all sorts of snide remarks about certain physical features they possessed. When it was Momoko’s turn to read aloud, they had to put up with a certain passage about their kid being almost as wide as he was tall. “Well, that’s just rude,” they thought. They knew people who were on the heavier side, for example, their fellow necromancer Arachne. Good thing she wasn’t here tonight or she’d have a fit of rage at this book. And deservedly so.
William was continually abused by his relatives until he turned eleven, at which point he was whisked away by an absolute hulk of a man to a magical school called Merrymons. There, he met Jason Andrews and Gabriella Harrison and became fast friends with them. But before they could have a proper introduction to the school, they had a proper introduction to their nemesis.
A young man was eyeing William with the sort of look that indicated he didn’t intend to make friends. Yet he approached William anyway. “So you’re the famous William Baker,” he said matter-of-factly. His dark eyes shone in a way that made William suspect he was up to something. “The name’s Abshir. Shirin Abshir.”
“Shirin?” repeated Gabriella in disbelief. “But that’s a girl’s name.”
The boy frowned. “I am a girl.”
Jason tugged on William’s hand. “You’d best be careful of him. He’s what my mom refers to as a ‘trans-identified male.’”
Reya stopped reading. Everyone collectively made a noise that encapsulated how disgusted they were by the author’s choice of words. Strider non-verbally reached over and put their hand on top of Reya’s.
After the run-in with Shirin, the students were all sorted into one of four houses: Miraculo, Tigereye, Hrududu, and Luciferus. Shirin’s name was first to be called, except the professor in charge of sorting addressed her as Aman Abshir. When Shirin didn’t move from her place in line, the professor had to address her as Shirin, but was kind of a dick about it.
Shirin was sorted into Luciferus.
Jason was next, and was very relieved to be sorted into Miraculo. He was also very glad when William joined him, although William spent a lot of time sitting at the front of the room and the Choosy Hat seemed to want to put him in Luciferus.
Lillian Black also became a Miraculo, while Mallory Briar went to Luciferus. Timothy Cole went to Hrududu, and Tessa Cook to Tigereye. The list of names went on for a while, but there was an obvious pattern emerging: Other than Shirin, the people who went to Luciferus all had names that suggested some kind of sinister connotation. Mallory Briar, Viktoria Fang, Richard Grimoire, Silvana Sinistra, and so on like that.
Anyway, Merrymons was full of magic, whimsy, and a disturbing number of safety hazards. Staircases would move on their own without warning, and one had a trick step that would cause you to fall straight through it if you weren’t careful. Also, the suits of armor were sentient and liked to walk around the place.
Despite all this, William’s first class, Potions, was his first real obstacle. The teacher, Professor Samira Thorn, was a real pain in the ass who gatekept William’s knowledge of potion ingredients, then gave him detention when he didn’t know any of the answers.
“Hey, wait a tick,” said Eowyn. “I knew a Samira when I was working in potions. She was nothing like this. Is this a personal attack?”
“Could be,” said Reya. “Did the Samira you knew have greasy black hair and a hooked nose?”
“She had dark hair, but it wasn’t greasy, and her nose was not that big either,” Eowyn scoffed. “I reject every part of that description-- and so would she.”
After Samira was done gatekeeping and harassing William, everyone had to make a very simple potion that two kids in particular had a very hard time with. No, it wasn’t William and Jason, although their potion wasn’t very good either. Instead, Lennon Cooper and Pádraig O’Flynn completely blew up their cauldron and sprayed their unfinished, boiling hot potion all over the classroom. The entire class had to go to the medical center, which is something the school has apparently, but Samira made William and Jason stay behind and clean up the mess, even though it wasn’t at all their fault and they were burned just as badly as the rest of the class.
“Why is there a hospital at the school?” asked Griffin. “Are the students really in that much danger of getting seriously injured that they need to have a hospital on site?”
After everyone had had their burns treated (except William and Jason), it was time for broomstick flying lessons. William and Shirin had an argument in midair, causing Shirin to charge at William but hit Lennon instead. Lennon fell off his broom and hit the ground hard.
“Welp,” said Tadashi. “Guess he’s dead, then.”
Somehow Lennon survived, but he had to go to the medical center again because he’d broken his wrist. How he managed to survive a fall with such a relatively minor injury was beyond everyone reading this book. Shirin and William resumed their midair fight as if nothing had happened (“Who is in charge of this class, and why aren’t they stopping them?!” Griffin exclaimed) which culminated in Shirin flying down, snatching a crystal ball out of someone’s hands, and throwing it as hard as she could. William had to race to catch it before it hit the ground, stopping right in front of his head of house’s office. The head, Magdalena Mallow, was so impressed by his flying skills that she decided straight away to get him a spot on the Wizard Football team.
13 Suher
In the next chapter, Gabriella referred to Shirin using masculine terms and Shirin got on Gabriella’s case for being a terf.
“You must think you’re so much better than me just because you’re a ‘real woman,’” Aman shouted for everyone to hear. “Don’t think I don’t hear-- or hear ABOUT-- all the snide remarks you make about me. Do you seriously have no other hobbies besides bossing people around, insisting on being right all the time, and being a terf? No wonder no one likes you.”
Gabriella started tearing up. “That is such a hateful word!” She ran away crying.
“...But she was being a terf,” said Griffin. “I don’t understand why the story’s painting Gabriella as the victim.”
“This is the same narrative that called Shirin a ‘trans-identified male’ three chapters ago,” said Reya. “It’s really not that surprising.”
Strider put their hand on Reya’s again. “Are you doing okay?”
Reya hung her head and groaned, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take…”
Gabriella did not return to class that afternoon, and Lillian Black commented at dinner that she had seen her crying in the third floor girls’ bathroom for the last two hours. William and Jason were sad that she was missing the Halloween feast. Jason was busy helping himself to another chicken leg when Professor Raj Patel ran into the hall screaming, “TROLL! THERE’S A TROLL IN THE SCHOOL!”
He stopped to try and catch his breath, and then he fainted. It took a moment’s pause for the gravity of the situation to set in, and then there was a mass panic. Students screamed and tried to run for the doors, but since there was only one egress to the dining hall, they just ended up blocking the doors in one large shoving mass.
Eventually, the headmaster got the students to calm down long enough for them to form lines according to their house and be escorted back to their respective dorms. However, William and Jason realized that Gabriella didn’t know about the troll. They broke away from the Miraculo line to get to the third floor girls’ bathroom. By the time they got there, the troll was already inside. They had to use the one spell they had learned that day to knock the troll out. When the teachers found them, Gabriella took the fall for everyone, saying she had gone looking for the troll out of curiosity. Samira didn’t believe her and gave William and Jason detention for their recklessness. Even Professor Mallow didn’t argue with her on that one.
During the first Wizard Football game, William got into a catfight in midair with Shirin over a small golden ball. It wasn’t the main ball that people were using to score points, but according to the story it would net the catcher’s team two hundred points and end the game, thus all but declaring victory for whoever caught it.
“That is such a dumb rule,” said Barold. “Literally what is even the point of the rest of the game if that thing determines who wins? That’s it. I’m done. This story is too stupid.”
He passed the book to Asami, then got up and left. Everyone else watched him leave and silently questioned whether it was worth seeing the story through to the end.
After several long minutes of just sitting there, they got back to the book. William eventually caught the Golden Ball That Makes Everything Else Irrelevant (the readers’ words, not Jolene’s), but not before Shirin shot a spell at him that almost made him fall off his broomstick. She was so mad about the loss (and about not unseating William) that she challenged him to a one-on-one duel after bedtime. However, when William and his entourage showed up at the location Shirin had specified that night, Shirin was nowhere to be seen. Realizing it had been a trick, they tried to get back to their dorm but took a wrong turn in the dark and ended up in a room with a very angry three-headed dog.
Somehow, they survived.
The next day, William went to his friend Hobart Hirsute (the groundskeeper, as well as the man who had brought William to Merrymons) about the incident with the dog. William, of course, left out the part where he and his friends were out of bed during the night. Hirsute had had a bit too much to drink because he casually mentioned that a) the dog was his, b) it was guarding something, and c) it had something to do with Headmaster Poppycock and some guy named Nicolas Flamel.
“Nicolas Flamel?” interrupted Reya. “Wasn’t that the guy who everyone thinks invented the secret to immortality?”
(Author’s note: This information has been brought to you by magical history class.)
Reya happened to be way ahead of the book in her prediction, as the next chapter showed William and Jason sneaking out after dark again to find more information on Flamel. But first, they found a magic mirror that showed the viewer what they desired most.
On Christmas morning, William received a Cloak of Invisibility, which proved extremely useful in aiding his sneaking-around efforts.
“I remember Christmas,” said Eowyn. “Isn’t that the holiday that the Outlanders tried to force us to celebrate?”
William finally found a book that mentioned Flamel. It credited him as the only known maker of the philosopher’s stone. He later asked Gabriella whether she knew what a philosopher’s stone was, without mentioning where he’d been the previous night. She told him that the philosopher’s stone could turn any metal into gold and produced an elixir that made the user immortal.
“No wonder Professor Thorn wants it,” she concluded. “Anyone would be after something like that.”
“What makes you think that Thorn’s after the stone?” William inquired.
“Haven’t you been paying any attention? It’s pretty clear from the look on her face that she knows something about the stone and she’s planning to go after it.”
“I call bullshit on that,” said Strider. “At what point has it even been implied that Samira knows anything about the Wise Guy’s Rock?”
“I think in chapter ten, the narrative said she had a chunk torn out of her robes,” said Griffin. “The three-headed dog definitely could have done that.”
Things only got more dire from there. Hirsute had a dragon egg in his possession and wouldn’t say where he got it from. Knowing that dragons were too dangerous to keep as pets (“There are so many things wrong with that statement,” said Reya), William and his entourage tried to send the dragon egg off to Jason’s brother Ralph, who knew how to handle dragons. However, they got caught passing the egg off to Ralph and his friends, and Professor Mallow was extremely disappointed with all of them. She might have gotten them in serious trouble, except she didn’t believe that William could have had the means to acquire the dragon egg himself. Too confused to figure out the details, she settled on giving them all detention.
Their punishment was to help Hirsute figure out who or what was killing his unicorns. After a long and stressful walk in the spooky woods, they found a very dead unicorn with a creepy hooded figure standing over the corpse and drinking its blood. When Hirsute saw it, he quickly escorted everyone away. According to him, there was nothing they could do about the unicorns.
“What was that?” William demanded as Hirsute marched in the opposite direction of the hooded thing.
“I’d rather not say the name,” he responded. “No one likes to say it.”
“Why not?”
“Because people are still scared o’ him, that’s why. It’s still too soon, an’ he’s done things worse than yeh could possibly imagine.” He looked around to make sure they weren’t being followed. “Alright, fine. His name was…” He paused for a long time. “...Anomy. Don’ make me say that name again. Back in the day, he was the mos’ powerful Dark wizard in the world. Then he died. Or so they say. But most people think he’s still out there, tryin’ to get back to the way he was before.”
Apparently, Anomy had killed William’s whole family, but when he tried to kill William, the spell backfired on him. Ever since then, he had been slowly decaying and trying to stave off death through various means. William and his entourage determined from this information that Anomy wanted the philosopher’s stone and that he must be consulting with Samira to help him get it.
It was clear what they had to do: They had to get the stone first.
As soon as their end-of-year exams were over, William and his entourage went straight to Hirsute and got him drunk enough that he’d tell them how to get past his three-headed dog. The answer was simple: All they had to do was play him some music.
They went straight to the room with the dog and William played on the flute that Hirsute had given him for Christmas. As soon as the dog was asleep, everyone went down the trapdoor.
But their quest was far from over. Many traps lay between them and their goal, each one deadlier than the last. In the end, only William was left. Jason had gotten knocked out playing giant wizard chess and Gabriella decided to stay behind to tend to him. (“Oh. I thought the author meant they were dead,” Griffin said, sounding a bit disappointed.)
There was only one person standing between William and his prize. But it wasn’t Samira. It was the Anti-Dark Magic professor, Raj Patel. Upon seeing William, he removed his turban to reveal that he’d been harboring Anomy inside his body this whole time. They fought, and Patel tried to kill William, but when Patel laid a hand on William, his hand got burned. This confused him for long enough for William to get in front of the magic mirror Patel had been consulting a minute earlier. He recognized it as the same magic mirror from earlier. His reflection took a large red stone from his pocket, then put it back in. At that same moment, the stone magically manifested in William’s own pocket.
“The hells?” exclaimed Momoko. “How did that work?”
As soon as Patel saw that William had the stone, he went back to trying to kill William. William retaliated by grabbing Patel’s face until Patel eventually disintegrated. Anomy’s ghost burst out of Patel’s charred corpse and flew away screaming, but not before punching (?) William.
William woke up in the medical center, where Headmaster Poppycock congratulated him on keeping the stone away from Anomy. Poppycock also explained how William was able to get the stone, but the explanation was bullshit.
And just like that, the school year was over. William, Jason, and Gabriella got back on the train to take them back to the normie world. William speculated about how his relatives didn’t know he wasn’t allowed to use magic outside of school, and that was the end of the book.
“Thank Sora that’s over,” said Jun. “I was about ready to punch a wall from all that bullshit.”
“You might just get your chance,” said Jamilah. “Because we’re just getting started.” She pulled out another book. It featured William holding onto the tail feathers of a phoenix.
Reya looked horrified. “How many books did this woman write?”
Jamilah smiled. “Seven.” She pulled out five more books. Four of them were noticeably much bigger than the one they had just finished.
Griffin’s eyes got a bit wider. “I don’t think I have the capacity to sit through six more volumes of this shit.”
“I don’t think I do either,” said Jamilah, “but morbid curiosity has gotten the better of me, so really, what can I do?” She put the books back on the shelf. “But we’ll leave it for now and start the next book some other day.”
Reya lay awake for a long time. She couldn’t remember the last time she had read such a problematic story. The people she was supposed to be rooting for were some of the worst characters she had ever seen rendered on a page. There wasn’t a single thing she liked about them. And she knew that they would continue to succeed, as if to spite her in particular, because at the end of the day, they were the protagonists.
These thoughts plagued Reya’s mind until she eventually fell asleep.