The Realm

Chapter 6 Hotter Than Hell

Salem yawns and stretches out on the couch. His dorm mate still hadn’t come out of his room. Salem shrugs it off and decides to go for a walk around the school. He stands, only to hear the jiggle of the guy’s doorknob.
“Stupid door. How the hell does this thing work?”
Salem laughs.
“It’s magic, you have to activate it with your key, or by your assigned spell.” Salem responds, noticing the key on the bathroom floor.
“Assigned spell? Uhm, what if I just break it down?” Flame seems distressed.
“I mean- it’s your room, just know they probably won’t fix it,” Salem tilts his head, “Why not just use your spell?”
“I- it doesn’t matter,” Flame responds softly before kicking down the door. He falls with it and face-plants, “Ow…”
Salem crouches by him with a soft smile. He picks Flame up and dusts him off.
“How often do you do that?” Salem puts a hand on his face, checking for any injuries.
“Depends on how often I get locked in…” Flame nervously chuckles.
“Well then maybe it’s best that door stays down,” Salem laughs lightly.
“Oh it won’t, I’ll end up fixing it with a non-magic door, I don’t want to mess with any of your friends coming over,” Flame gently removes Salem’s hand from his face.
“Friends? Oh I, uhhh,” Salem searches for the right words to use.
“That’s alright, I don’t know many people either, dad doesn’t like me being idly enough to do anything but fight.”
“Heh, fair enough,” Salem looks into his eyes, “Well do you want to be friends? I don’t want to live with a guy who hates me.”
Flame goes a bit pink, his heart racing, something about Salem is hypnotising.
“I’d love to!” Flame exclaims with a tad too much enthusiasm.
Salem smiles and grabs his arm.
    “Come on, then! I’ll show you arou-”
    A rapping on the door causes Salem to freeze up, he pushes Flame into the bedroom with the working door and shushes him.
    “Salem. Open the door, before I break it down,” A rough and cold voice speaks.
    “Coming!” Salem responds before opening the door, “Someone’s impatient.”
    “I hea-” The person pauses.
Flame quietly makes a crack in the door to see.
    It’s a demon. Slightly taller than Salem, his horns are black and rounded. He wears a black suit. Flame can’t make out his face very well, but it looks broken from what he can see.
    “Salem, what happened to that door?” The demon speaks, sending chills down Flame’s spine.
“Roomie broke it before I got here, probably got stuck.”
“Why would a Phoenix, powerful magic users, get stuck in a room of magic?” The demon narrows his eyes and looks around for discrepancies.
“Maybe it was a servant that got stuck? It’s not unusual for royals to have their stuff brought up.”
    Lynx looks over to Salem’s room, seeing, what he thinks is, a figure behind the door. Flame notices and trembles.
    Salem notices and tries to get his attention.
“What are you looking at?”
“Who is in your room?”
“No one, that is a weird mannequin the previous user left behind.”
“Let’s test that,” The demon glares at the crack in the door while approaching.
    Flame looks around the room to find a hiding place. Salem attempts to stall the guy.
The demon opens the door.
It's an empty room.