The Lady's Secret (School for Good and Evil)

Guard with a Fingerglow

Tedros looked up, staring at the Kingdom Council, disbelieving that they could think he was the villain here.

When he looked around, all of his friends wore the same expressions. Agatha looked more surprised than angry, though the witches were all rage. Tedros could almost see smoke coming out of Hester's ears.

"Now you know the truth," an icy voice came from behind them. Tedros turned to see Japeth and Sophie surfacing out of the flames. It was dark and Japeth's golden finger glow lit up his and Sophie's faces. "Tedros the Snake," he cooed tauntingly.

A chant had started to form above them. "Tedros the Snake... Tedros the Snake..." the Kingdom leaders screamed through the golden bubble.

Their chants ceased when they suddenly plunged into darkness. Japeth had shot a spell extinguishing the fire on the stage, which was their only source of light. He dimmed his finger glow and the courtyard went dark. It was pitch black except for the light from the moon, which wasn't very helpful as it was just a sliver of a crescent.

Through the darkness Tedros could make out the Snake. His suit of scims was forming back on his body, hidden in the coat of nightfall. Slowly they started detaching from his torso. The dark emerald scims, reflecting the same color as their master's finger glow, shot towards Tedros.

He backed up, pushing Agatha out of the way just in time. The scims sliced through the air where Tedros had been just moments ago. They turned towards him and dove again. This time one got him.

He braced himself for the pain of the razor sharp blade.

But it didn't come.

Instead, the scim attached itself to Tedros's skin, like a sticky rubber mask. It inflated like a balloon once it touched him. He pulled it off easily, but now three more were headed his way. The razors were coming after him, sticking onto his arms, legs, and face, ballooning up, each at least a foot thick. The faster he pulled one off, the faster three more attached to him.

Soon there were 50... 100... 300 scims stuck to his skin. Tedros felt like he was hyperventilating. He couldn't breath and scims were sticking to him faster than he could pull them off.

It felt like each scim weighed 20 pounds as they dragged him to the grass floor. Tedros coughed on the ground taking his last breath as scims suffocated him. He wheezed as Agatha tried to pull scims off of him again, but they pricked her as soon as she got close to Tedros, leaving blood trailed across his body.

He took his dying breath, inhaling as much air as he could, before the scims crushed his lungs.

But that didn't happen.

Instead of dying, Tedros felt stronger. The scims had tightened and smoothed around his body, forming a sleek matte black suit. He lifted his head up to face Agatha, and she squinted her eyes to see in the dark. Then a horrified look spread across her face before she recoiled in shock.

"Tedros... the scims..." she started

That's when Tedros realized.

He was wearing Japeth's Snake suit. He wasn't the Lion anymore. He really was Tedros the Snake.

Suddenly, the garden exploded with light. He looked to Japeth, clad in his blue and gold King's suit, pointing a golden finger glow up at the sky. The ball of light stayed close enough to the ground that it was as bright as the sun, illuminating the garden in the middle of the night.

Gasps echoed from above and Tedros looked up. The Kingdom Council was staring down at him, shocked looks on their faces.

"He really is the Snake!" the king of Foxwood yelled.