Chapter 10

May 26, 1995

Coralis could not sleep. She barely slept the entire week, regardless of how exhausted she was. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was about to happen. Lord Meozo was the topic that was on everyone’s lips, everyone had a story to tell. The school didn’t share any news about him, because they didn’t want students to panic, but relatives and friends outside the school would write everything about it in their letters to students.

The elemental population was frightened: they didn’t want to lose their aura to Lord Meozo. The students knew they were safe at school, but the school year was almost over. What would happen when they get home? What would they come home to? Coralis knew the school wasn’t as safe as the administrators wanted the students to believe and she knew that it was a matter of time before he came for her himself.

At 4:00, she got up and went to the window to sit on the ledge. The windows were locked, but she had found a way to open them. Looking at the horizon, she saw an odd dark fog with a tint of red, atop a hill just across the school perimeter. ‘This can’t be good’, she thought. She sat on the ledge, staring at it. She wanted to fly toward it to investigate what it was, to see if it was related to Lord Meozo.

She went back inside to pick up her wand and her flying stick, and just as she was about to jump across the window, she found herself standing in the middle of what looked like a cave, but with an opening above her. She could see the sky through it. Looking around her, it didn’t take her long to figure out what had just happened. She had been summoned.

In front of her stood a humanoid creature as tall as her, with orange piercing eyes. She heard the stories: she knew what, or rather who it was. Lord Meozo stood in front of her. Quickly, she made sure that her mind walls were up and cemented, like Martha taught her. He was staring at her with a smirk on his face.

“At last, I get to meet you,” he said, in a croaking voice. “I remember the last time I saw your mother. I wanted her to bring you to me, but your father reminded us that we had a meeting to do… and well… we died… well… the world thought I died… but I didn’t…”

Coralis closed her eyes and tried to focus on her inner energy and to decide what she was going to do next. She didn’t think she was strong enough to destroy Lord Meozo, but maybe she could manage to stun him long enough for her to escape and get reinforcements. As she felt her energy stirring within her, she remembered something she read about a similar situation that happened nearly 700 years ago in the Tibetan mountains. She opened her eyes, Lord Meozo was still staring at her.

“You are just as beautiful as your mother, although, I think you look more like your father.”

“What about yours?” said Coralis, staring into his eyes, pushing some of her energy into them.

Lord Meozo took a few steps back, blinking.

“What about mine?” said Lord Meozo, trying to understand what had just happened and felt a burning sensation in his eyes. “What did you do, little Golmar?”

Smiling, she tried to do the same trick she did, but this time, she directed some of her energy through her wand, trying to amplify the spell. Lord Meozo took another step back. He became enraged and lashed out at her, but she was already a step ahead of him: she was anticipating a fight from Lord Meozo, not a talk. She ducked, so the spell he sent her hit the wall behind her instead. He rushed to her with his claws out. She couldn’t get out of the way on time and he managed to slash her right shoulder blade.

Her adrenaline was pumping high, so she didn’t feel the pain from it and got back on her feet. Once again, she pushed out some of her energy and stared into his eyes, with a firm grip on her wand in her left hand.

“What about your mother?” taunted Coralis. “You remember her, don’t you?”

His left hand went to her throat and he lifted her in the air. She was so focused on her own energy and on what she was going to do next, that she didn’t realize she was hanging in the air until she started feeling light headed. She ignored the feeling and pushed through it to force more energy into his eyes, willing it to get into his memories, to pierce through his mental walls. He wasn’t expecting her to be able to get into his mind like that, and into his soul: everyone thought he had no soul.

By the time he realized what she was doing, it was too late. He couldn’t push her out. He felt his brain burning and unconsciously, he released the pressure on her throat. He still had his left hand wrapped around her throat, but no grip. Her feet touched back the ground.

“WHAT ABOUT YOUR MOTHER?” she said.

She kept pushing her energy into him, forcing him to remember his childhood, uncovering memories he had buried for 207 years. She felt her wand burning in her hand, but she ignored it and kept pushing through, willing her energy to get deeper into his soul.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?” he shrieked.

She was forcing light into his soul, cranking up the intensity, while forcing Lord Meozo to view the memories of his mother’s eyes and of everything she had done for him, using the light to purify his damned soul and force him to feel his mother’s love, a love he thought he never had.

As students and teachers woke up, they saw the dark fog looming in the horizon, across the school perimeter. Coralis’ friends noticed that she was missing. They were convinced that she was in the middle of that fog. School authorities sent a few teachers and guards to investigate what was going on by the Eastern border. A white light started peeking through it, and everyone was staring at it.

Swope and Borin were among the three teachers who were sent to investigate. They also saw the white light coming through the dark fog.

“Bet we’ll find Ms. Golmar and Lord Meozo in there?” said Borin.

“I’m just hoping we won’t find her brainwashed against us,” said Swope.

When the group got there, Lord Meozo still had his left hand around her throat, but his skin was all dried up and becoming ashy. Her skin was glowing bright, her eyes were illuminated and still staring into Lord Meozo decaying skull. There was a thick black smoke hanging in the air, with a white and yellow filament coming out of him from his ears, shooting up toward the sky. Lord Meozo was disintegrating in front of their eyes and turning into a pile of ash and dust.

They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Suddenly, Coralis collapsed on the ground, unconscious. That shook them back to their senses. Swope rushed to her and checked if she was still breathing.

“She stam’ed out. I don’t know how much energy she used up, but she’s completely drained,” said Swope. “I’m going to take her to the infirmary. I will meet you all at Principal Arthurio’s office. You know what you saw.”

“Do we?” said Borin while the others were looking around, taking in what was left of Lord Meozo.

Yuril, the other teacher, passed his hand above the pile of ash and dust. Yuril was a fay who was very connected to any type of living energy.

“There is absolutely nothing coming out of these ashes, not even any essence residue. If he would have transferred his soul into another vessel or object, there would still have been some essence residue stuck to his bodily remains or lingering around,” he said to the others. “I don’t know what she did to him… but I think she destroyed him for good… there is nothing that could be resurrected… as if she literally burned down his soul or something.”

“We will need to ask her when she wakes up,” said Swope, “for now we only know what we saw.”

Borin pulled a bag out of his robe and turned a rock into a broom. Yuril took the broom from his hand and helped him get all the ashes and dust into the bag.

“We will meet you at Principal Arthurio’s office, but after that, we’ll be having a field day at the lab,” said Borin.

They all walked out of the cave and Swope ran to the infirmary, with Coralis still unconscious in his arms. Martha met him there. While the nurse was busy patching up Coralis’ shoulder, Swope told Martha what they saw. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew that Coralis was growing very powerful, but knowing how much energy it would have taken out of her, she suspected that she would be out for some days. This confirmed that Coralis wasn’t a wind mage: she was a spirit one and that was probably why Lord Meozo wanted her so badly, especially if she turned out to be as powerful as her father, if not more.

Because she had no official family, as her guardian, Martha agreed to let the Fullemon family to visit her while she was in a coma. Erik and Henry argued that she was like a sister to them, so that they had to see her. She knew that the Fullemons would have adopted her if given the opportunity. She also allowed Victoria to visit her.

Everyone wanted to know what had happened. The dark fog and the white light had been seen from well beyond the school ground. Coralis was only 14-year-old, still a minor. She might have destroyed Lord Meozo, but there would still be people out there trying to get to her. To protect her, when she communicated to the students what happened and answered the questions coming from the media, Martha kept referring to her by her nickname, Blue Thunder. Students were already calling her Blue Thunder on a daily basis at school: that nickname had stuck since they gave it to her, a few years back. Only the teachers and staff were calling her by her actual civil name. Many of the students didn’t even know her actual name or had forgotten it.

Coralis stayed in a coma for 7 days. She missed the beginning of the final exams, but the school administrators agreed that given the circumstances and what she had done, she would be exempted from some of them, and would be able to retake some of them when she gets back on her feet.

She was discharged from the infirmary 4 days later. Sitting at the dinner table with her friends, they noticed that her eye colour started changing. They were normally green, but their colour started alternating from green to a mix of silver and dark blue. Her friends pointed it out to her. They knew what this meant. The eye colour of a mage would typically start changing around the time their elemental energy reached maturity. The age for that to happen varied from a bloodline to another, but very rarely before the age of 20. That fight against Lord Meozo was so intense that it changed her and her aura grew back stronger during her coma.

Coralis was worried. She had to find a way to force her eyes to stay on their normal green colour. The school year was almost over and because she became a reservist for the Canadian national flyball team, she would have to travel back and forth between Glasgow and Montreal for the summer. She couldn’t be seen with silver and dark blue eyes by humans: this wasn’t a natural eye colour.

She decided to ask Martha for advice. Martha was also concerned: Coralis had to learn to control the surplus of energy that was now coming out of her, or incidents were bound to happen when she was among humans. She told her to come to her office right after her last exam, and to bring Victoria with her.

As instructed, Coralis and Victoria went to Martha’s office right after their last exam. Martha gave Coralis a pair of eyeglasses.

“I asked you girls to come see me for two reasons. First, to give you these eyeglasses, Ms. Golmar. These eyeglasses serve two purposes: to glamour your eye colour like their original one, and to conceal your aura. When you wear them, you won’t be able to use your elemental inner magic, but you’ll be able to use your wand.”

“Thank you so much for that,” said Coralis. “It’s a life saviour. I shouldn’t be using my magic when I’m in public surrounded by humans anyway, so it’s totally fine if I can’t use it just like that when wearing them.”

“However, you still need to learn to control it. That fight against Lord Meozo had completely drained you. While you were in the coma, recharging, your essence has grown more potent, stronger than it should be for your age, and that’s what’s reflecting through your eyes.

“The other reason I asked you two to come see me before you get ready to leave school, is to give you a first lesson in animal transformation. Ms. Golmar, I know you will be travelling back and forth between Glasgow and Montreal. Erik and Henry Fullemon took that class during the year, so you can practice with them when you’re there, but I also want Victoria to start learning about it, so you two can practice together when you’re in Montreal.”

“How is that going to help me? Honestly, I am excited at the idea of learning how to transform into an animal, Erik and Henry kept talking about their animal transformation classes, but I don’t see how it is supposed to help me. Wouldn’t it make my essence even more potent?”

“It will give your energy an outlet. You will need to focus on willing it to transform you into your choice animal. I’m sure the twins told you that the change is not painful, we’re not moon shifters or lycanthropes. The animal transformation process will give you a form of control over it. Remember that controlling your energy is also about controlling your emotions, so make sure that you keep your emotions in check at all times.”

Coralie chose the panther as her animal, while Victoria chose the pigeon. Martha gave a book to both of them and proceeded to their first lesson. An hour later, it was time for them to go to the dining hall for their last dinner at school. She told them to practice animal transformation during the summer and to read the book. When they get back to school after the summer, she will meet with them again to check on their progress.