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Cater knew this duel was a bad idea. He’d said so, at least half a dozen times in half a dozen hashtags, but it didn’t seem like anyone was particularly looking for his opinion. Not Riddle, not Trey, and definitely not the most stubborn first years he might’ve ever met. And that was coming from a third-year student at Night Raven College, whose unofficial tagline should definitely be something about stubborn, emotional ignorance.
And speaking of those first years…they did not look good. Identical looks of pain played across three pale faces. Cater swore he could see them sweat, even the Ramshackle kid who hadn’t fought at all. Were they all sick? Cater would not be #surprised if they picked up something nasty in the still-should-be-condemned dorm they were staying in, but he hoped they hadn’t dragged it into Heartslabyul. And if they were sick, why in the name of the Seven would they participate in a duel?! Cater was too much of a slacker at heart to understand that kind of foolhardy determination. Way better to keep your head down and smile through it. That was his tried and true method. They’d seem shaky even as they’d lined up for the duel, though he’d initially chalked it up to nerves (who wouldn’t be shaking in their boots facing Riddle Rosehearts?). Cater had been keeping his eye on them, his gut churning uncomfortably as he studied the foolhardy first years. They hadn’t looked good all day, but now they looked downright sick. Like they’d be throwing up on the grass any second.
Even Acey, who’d just punched Riddle straight in the face, his own expression drawn yet determined, a tiredness in his eyes Cater didn’t want to say he recognized.
And that was not the only mess brewing in the garden.
Riddle was having a #crashout, level severe, on a level Cater had never seen before. His tightly wound strings seemed to be pop, pop, popping. And the rest of the dorm weren’t bowing their heads, to Cater’s disbelief (Why the struggle? Why the fight? Why do something that compromises your survival, as tightrope thin as your balance feels?)
The Headmage was scolding everyone at the scene half-heartedly, being about as useful as he ever was, which is to say, not at all.
Riddle's furious seething turned into frantic laughter. A shiver ran down Cater's spine. The air seemed thicker than normal, the rose-sweet smell replaced with something darker. He did not like this.
“Take it back! Say you know nothing!” He yelled, no humor in his tone. “I am right! I must be the most correct!” He waved the scepter he just used to behead a swath of students like the weapon it was, pointing it like a blade at Ace Trappola. Ace Trappola, whose face was an ashen gray, who swayed where he stood, who anyone in their right mind would see was deeply unwell. Surely he’d take it back, right? Accept the out he was given?
“No way. You’re just proving my point, acting like such a big baby!” Ace turned his head in a sharp defiant movement, despite the nausea that colored his face.
Cater should’ve known better.
“ADMIT IT! SAY IT, OR I SHALL RUN YOU THROUGH WHERE YOU STAND!”
Ace did his best impression of the pretend I do not see it meme. Cater wanted to pull his hair out.
“Just apologize, Acey!” Cater whisper-yelled, desperate and exasperated.
“Ace…” Deuce let out, voice thin and trembling. Was he pained or scared? Cater couldn’t tell. Yuu gagged onto the grass, nothing coming out other than tears in their eyes.
The scream Riddle let out bordered on inhuman. Cater clutched at his ears.
“MIGHTY ROSES! TEAR THIS BRUTE TO PIECES!”
The air was turning thick and gray as the ground shifted under their feet. The decades-old rosebushes were torn out of their roots like hair in a brush, rising with deadly intent at the rebellious first year. Their petals and leaves turned razor sharp, the deadly intent of the magic controlling them turning them from beautiful to dangerous. Cater’s blood ran cold and so utterly thin.
No way. No way, right?! Sure, Riddle was a hardass, the strictest person Cater had ever met (along with the smartest) and his temper might be on a hair trigger but–
He wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t.
Cater couldn’t move. Riddle let the trees fly.
Ace covered his face, stumbling backwards in fear. The trees turned to playing cards that covered the garden, the countless collars Riddle had summoned following shortly behind. This magic was familiar, but that wasn’t possible, right?
And yet there Trey was, magic pen outstretched and sweat dripping from his brow. Riddle flounders, mouth and eyes wide open. The air smells like sugar and ink.
Trey’s face is a pained grimace, no pride at all, as he tells Riddle what he's done, what his spell is truly capable of.
Cater can’t help but mutter, “That’s some cheat code…” Was this really the spell Cater had been mooching off of to make sweet things more bearable for the past two years? Wow.
“You too…have decided to betray me?”
Riddle's voice was small. Pain belied the anger. He sounded like a child.
Trey tried to soothe him, like he always does, but it was like Riddle couldn’t hear at all. The students around them screamed, whispered, all sounds filled with hollowed-out fear.
“He was really going to kill that first year…” The sentiment was all the same.
Riddle looked so utterly lost, his expression so different from his usual that Cater almost missed it when black blot began to roll down his face in thick rivulets.
And then everything, somehow, manages to get much, much worse.
Riddle’s magestone bursts with a flood of blot, and he doubles over, horrific screams tearing from his throat. It begins to distort, as Riddle’s body follows, the sound multilayered and no longer quite human.
It’s this dissonant cry that makes Cater almost miss the other three voices that have begun screaming as well. And not in terror like half the assembled dorm.
Instead it was one of pure, unrestricted pain, the cries of a dying animal.
Ace, Deuce, and Yuu had collapsed to the ground, uncaring as the grass dried out and the dirt turned into blot-slick mud. They writhed and screamed, clutching their heads. There was no awareness of anything around them, isolated in their own world of pure torturous sensation. Grim, the loudmouth cat creature, had none of his previous bravado, tears in his eyes as he tugged uselessly on the downed Yuu’s sleeve.
Around them, students cowered and fled, running from the monster that was growing from their Housewarden, and the mysterious ailment that had dropped three first years. Cater wanted to cry, which he’d promised himself he’d never do at school (in front of others), but desperate times and measures and such. He didn’t know what to do, and based on Trey’s hyperventilating, he didn’t either. They needed help, an adult, someone to tell them what to do.
To save them.
He never felt more like a kid, wanting someone to take his hand and guide him in the right way. The Headmage was here. Surely he would–
Cater turns to see Crowley fleeing, or as he’d put it, ‘leading evacuation attempts’, without a care for the frenzied Riddle, the dying first years, or the students who were downed and left behind.
Though he’d never say he particularly liked or trusted the Headmage, Cater would never forget the sharp feeling of despair and betrayal he felt in this moment. You had to be kidding, right? He was coming back, right? He was gonna save them, right?
…Right?
(Cater didn’t want to die.)
He wanted to run, flee, join their coward of a Headmage in abandoning everything, but he couldn’t. Guilt and grief and endless dread glued his feet to the blot-thick grass.
“Trey…” His own voice came out thin and wrecked, like it shared the pain of the others' screams. “Trey, what do we do?” He swallowed down the nauseous fear, even if the only ones left to call him an unreliable upperclassman were screaming their heads off.
“I can’t let him die.” A glance at the downed first years, Grim spitting flames in their defense, fear and tears mixing in his eyes. “I can’t let them die.”
(Cater didn’t want to die either.)
Like usual, Trey took it all on himself. He didn’t expect Cater to do anything; he didn’t sound like he’d be disappointed if he ran too. He didn’t say ‘we’. Did he expect Cater to be the coward he was?
…Painful but fair. Not like he’d ever proven otherwise.
Trey might forgive him if he ran, but Cater would never forgive himself.
(Cater really, really didn’t want to die here.)
He raised his pen and prepared to fight.