Page 52 of Academy of the Wicked, Year Three (The Paranormal Elites of Wicked Academy #3)
The Revelations Of Wickedness
~GAbrIEL~
I watch from my in-between state as my sister and her bonds approach the crystallized forms of Nikki and Nikolai. The sight makes my chest constrict with something I refuse to name— concern, perhaps, or the echo of emotions I've spent centuries avoiding.
They stand like fountain statues in the center of the impossible garden, their translucent forms overlapping in ways that defy physical law.
Each breath they take is synchronized, shallow, barely disturbing the air around them.
Their hands remain clasped between their forms, creating a circuit of shared suffering that feeds on itself endlessly.
Lost in whatever nightmare oasis has pulled them together.
The thought arrives with certainty that comes from personal experience.
I know what it means to be trapped in shared consciousness, to have every thought echo through spaces that should be private.
But where Gwenievere and I were forced together by Elena's cruelty, Nikki and Nikolai chose their duality as survival mechanism.
Different prisons, same locks.
"Careful," Mortimer warns as they approach. His dragon senses are already alert, golden eyes tracking patterns in the garden that shouldn't exist. "Something's wrong with the dimensional stability here."
The understatement becomes apparent the moment Gwenievere's foot crosses into the circle surrounding the frozen pair.
Everything shifts.
The garden doesn't just change—it dies .
I watch flowers wither in fast-forward decay, petals turning black and crumbling to ash that hangs in suddenly still air. The trees that bore impossible fruit from multiple seasons simultaneously now bear only rot, branches becoming skeletal fingers that claw at sky that's no longer blue.
The sky itself transforms with violence that makes reality flinch. Blue bleeds to red like a wound opening across heaven. Purple veins spread through the crimson, pulsing with sickly light that makes everything below look diseased.
Then the rain begins.
But this isn't water—it's acid given liquid form, each drop hissing where it strikes earth that's already dying. The smell reaches even me in my non-physical state: burning flesh, corroding metal, the particular stench of hope dissolving into despair.
"Barrier!" Zeke shouts, his hands already moving in patterns that pull moisture from air that doesn't want to give it up.
His frost magic erupts in a dome of crystallized ice, but this isn't the beautiful fractals he usually creates.
This is desperate, utilitarian, layers upon layers of frozen protection that immediately begin to steam where the acid rain strikes.
The barrier holds but barely, each drop eating through ice that Zeke has to constantly regenerate.
"Look," Gwenievere breathes, and I follow her gaze to where Nikki and Nikolai should be.
They're gone.
The space where they stood is empty, not even an impression in grass that's now black and writhing like it's in pain. I spin with the others, searching, and that's when we all see it.
Behind them rises a hill that wasn't there seconds ago. It stretches up at an angle that seems designed to exhaust rather than be climbed, its surface covered in sharp stones and thorned vines that promise agony to anyone who attempts ascent.
But it's what's at the top that makes my nonexistent heart skip.
A platform juts from the hill's peak like an accusation against the burning sky.
On it, two figures hang with the particular stillness of those hovering between life and death.
Nikki and Nikolai are chained together, their wrists crossed above their heads with golden chains that glow with their own malevolent light.
Their backs press against each other, unconscious, barely breathing.
And surrounding the hill, covering every inch of the slope ? —
Shadow beings. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
They're not quite human, not quite monster, but something between—the particular horror of almost-recognition.
Each one holds a torch that burns with black flame, the kind that gives no light but somehow makes the darkness visible.
They stand in perfect rows, organized like an army waiting for orders that have already been given.
"We have to get through them," Atticus states, crimson eyes already calculating angles and odds. "Fast. Those chains—they're draining them."
I can see it too, the way golden light pulses along the chains with each labored breath the prisoners take. Life force being siphoned, converted to something else, something that feeds the wrongness of this place.
"Together," Cassius commands, his shadows already writhing with anticipation of violence. "We hit them as one unit."
There's no more discussion. No time for strategy beyond instinct.
They charge.
I watch Mortimer shift mid-stride, his human form exploding outward into dragon glory that shouldn't be able to exist in this space but does through sheer will.
His scales shimmer between gold and crimson, each one inscribed with draconic runes that pulse with ancient power.
When he roars, the sound doesn't just fill the air—it reshapes it, creating waves of force that slam into the first rows of shadows.
The shadows scream when dragon fire touches them.
Not with pain but with release, as if being unmade is what they've been waiting for. Mortimer's flames aren't just hot—they're cleansing , burning away whatever force animates these beings and leaving nothing but ash that dissipates before it can touch ground.
His tail sweeps in devastating arcs, each movement calculated to clear maximum space. When shadows try to flank him, his wings snap out—membrane between the bones sharp as blades, cutting through multiple enemies with each extension.
But for every shadow that falls, two more seem to take its place.
My sister and Atticus move in perfect synchronization, a lifetime of combat reduced to instinct. Blood magic erupts from their hands—not separate attacks but combined, their bond allowing them to weave their power together into something greater than either could manage alone.
The blood arrows they create are works of terrible art. Each one forms from drops of their own vitae, crystallizing in air into projectiles that shouldn't exist. But these don't just pierce —they explode on impact, each detonation spreading corruption through the shadow ranks.
I track every movement, cataloging the way they fight as unit rather than individuals.
Where the blood touches, shadows begin to dissolve from within.
Their forms corrupt, black flame torches flickering as the beings clutch at wounds that spread like infection.
Some try to tear the infected parts away, but the blood has already spread through whatever passes for their circulation.
Gwenievere's fangs are fully extended, her eyes burning crimson as she draws more blood from self-inflicted wounds that heal almost as fast as she creates them. Each arrow she fires carries a piece of her rage, her determination, her absolute refusal to let Nikki and Nikolai die.
"Left flank!" she shouts, and Atticus responds without thought, their movements so synchronized they might be one being in two bodies.
Cassius has become something more than human, less than shadow, caught between states in a way that makes him devastating. His darkness doesn't just attack—it multiplies , each tendril that strikes a shadow being splitting into more, creating an exponential expansion of destruction.
The shadows he creates are different from the beings they fight.
Where the torch-bearers are animated absence, Cassius's shadows are aggressive presence.
They don't just occupy space—they devour it, creating voids that the shadow beings fall into and don't emerge from.
Each void pulses once before collapsing, taking whatever was caught inside to somewhere that isn't here, isn't anywhere.
His form is barely visible in the chaos, not because he's hidden but because he's become the chaos. Every shadow cast by every torch is potentially his, every dark space between enemies a doorway for his attacks. He's everywhere and nowhere, striking from angles that shouldn't exist.
"Above you!" he calls to Mortimer, who immediately rolls—dragon flexibility defying physics—as a wave of shadows attempts to drop from somewhere that wasn't there until they needed it to be.
Zeke maintains the barrier while simultaneously attacking, a feat of multitasking that would be impossible for anyone not carrying nine lives of experience.
His frost magic doesn't just freeze—it flash-freezes , the temperature differential so extreme that shadows shatter like glass the moment the cold touches them.
Waves of arctic force ripple out from his position, each one perfectly timed to catch shadows mid-charge. They freeze in place—torches still burning but bodies crystallized—before shattering into diamond dust that catches the diseased light beautifully.
But maintaining the barrier is draining him.
I can see it in the way his form flickers occasionally, the way his breathing becomes labored.
The acid rain is relentless, eating through ice faster than he can regenerate it, and every moment spent reinforcing the barrier is a moment not spent attacking.
"I need thirty seconds!" Zeke shouts, his voice strained with effort.
"You've got it," Gwenievere responds, and she and Atticus shift their attack pattern to cover his section.
I watch the battle with growing frustration at my inability to help physically.
The fluid chaos is beautiful in its violence.
Each member of the group knows exactly where the others are, what they need, when to attack and when to defend.
It's not practiced—they haven't had time to practice.
It's instinctive, born from bonds that transcend simple teamwork.
Halfway up the hill.