Purely Wicked (discontinued)

Chapter 14|| The Crypt Keeper's Solution

The cover was silver silk, painted with the glowing Storian clutched between black and white swans.

A Student's History of the Woods
August A. Sader

Sophie was looking for answers. She wanted to go home, no, she wanted Agatha to go home. This wasn't the place for her, she needed to be home in her graveyard with her cat and her mother.

Sophie opened to the first page.
"This book reflects the views of its author ONLY. Professor Sader's interpretation of history is his alone and the faculty does not share it. Sincerely, Clarissa Dovey & Lady Lesso, Deans of the School for Good and Evil."

Sophie felt encouraged the faculty disapproved of the book in her hands. It gave her more hope that somewhere in these pages was the answer to how to get home.

She flipped the page to start, but it didn't have words. Splashed across it were patterns of embossed dots in a rainbow of colours, small as pinheads. Sophie turned the page. More dots. She tore through fistfuls of pages. No words at all. She dumped her face to the book in frustration. Sader's voice boomed:

"Chapter Fourteen: The Great War."

Sophie lurched up. Before her eyes, a ghostly three-dimensional scene melted into view atop the book page—a living diorama, colours gauzy like Sader's paintings in the gallery. She crouched to watch a silent vision unfold of three wizened old men, beards to the floor, standing in the School Master's Tower with hands united. As the old men opened their hands, the gleaming Storian levitated out of them and over a familiar white stone table. Sader's disembodied voice continued:

"Now remember from Chapter One, the Storian was placed at the School for Good and Evil by the Three Seers of the Endless Woods, who believed it the only place it could be protected from corruption..."

Sophie gawked in disbelief. Sightless Sader couldn't write history. But he could see it and wanted the same for his students. Every time she turned a page and touched the dots, living history came alive to his narration. Most of Chapter 14 recounted about the School. That it had been ruled by two sorcerer brothers, one Good, one Evil, whose love for each other overcame their loyalties to either side. But in time, the Evil brother found love give way to temptation, until he saw only one obstacle between him and the pen's infinite power...his own blood.

Sophie's hands swept over dots, scanning exhaustive scenes of Great War battles, alliances, betrayals to see how it all ended. Her fingers stopped as she watched a familiar figure in silver robes and mask rise out of the burning carnage of battle, Storian in hand:

"From the final fight between Evil brother and Good brother, a victor emerged beholden to neither side. In the Great Truce, the triumphant School Master vowed to rise above Good and Evil and protect the balance for as long as he could keep himself alive. Neither side trusted the victor, of course. But they didn't need to."

The scene flashed to the dying brother, burning to ashes as he desperately stabbed his hands into the sky, unleashing a burst of silver light—

"For the dying brother used his final embers of magic to create a last spell against his twin; a way to prove Good and Evil still equal. As long as this proof stayed intact, then the Storian remained uncorrupted and the Woods in perfect balance. As as to what this proof is..."

Sophie could hear her heart pumping in her chest.

"It remains in the School for Good and Evil to this very day."

The scene went dark.

"Well that was useless." Sophie lamented to herself, flinging the book away onto the floor.