A Spirit's Strength || ON HIATUS

F O U R 3/5

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"What?!"

"You can't be serious!"

"I'm not yet ready to die!"

The Gryffindors' wails could be heard from a distance as they were already either: scratching their heads, pulling their hairs from their scalps, bulging their eyes out of their sockets, hanging their mouths agape, and mentally preparing themselves for the time of their lives as each of the wizards and witches leaned over the cliff with their pale-stricken faces – even Marinette, herself, felt the need to puke as she also glanced at the unpromising fields below them. Professor Bustier had always been that caring teacher amidst the other professors in Hogwarts, she wouldn't let any of her students fall face-flat over a high cliff – would she?

Alas, as Marinette sighed after peering at the end of the road – or what isn't the end, stated by their tapestried map – she frowned. "It doesn't look like we have a choice," she said as she shook her head. "There's no other way around it." And she was right, if there was anything that the flat-earthers would like to find as evidence that proves the Earth is a slate rather than the scientific fact that it is, indeed, an oblate spheroid, they could easily snap a picture of this cliff looking like its truly the end of the world.

"Wait a second –" Alya sneered as she briskly turned her head behind her, the dark insides of the forest radiating loud and clear for a slithering force to run down her spine, though not enough to claim the brunette's fears of the wild unknown. "– we're supposed to fend off another creature here, right?" She asked, dragging the last word's notation in rhythm with her right eye twitching yet again while she arched a suspicious brow at her best friend, catching her prediction as her eyes widened in sudden realization while she darted her bluebell orbs from both the cliff and the forest. "Then, what kind of monstrosity are we going to face now?"

And as if on cue, – for the second time of the day – a distinctive high pitched cackle erupted from behind the bushes and trees, causing the students to retrieve their wands gripped into their hands as they quickly changed their childish fears towards the alarming hicks of whatever approaching creature that was laughing at a distorted yet, calming tune.

The Gryffindors stood on their ground once the rustling of leaves grew heavily with hasty footsteps trudging forward out of the darkness, revealing an insightful of pointed hair, pointed faces, pointed teeth, pointed noses, pointed arms and legs, pointed hands and feet – pointed everything; the small thorn beings crawled from all corners of the forest, – from the branches of the trees to the roots of the soil – their green embellished skin collapsed from its bed of grasses as they walked into forms of prickly stems, their large yellow eyes gleamed once their pupil-less orbs were unleashed under the beaming sunlight, their long crooked noses stuck high in the air as they leisurely approached the teenagers' figures, and their sharp edged teeth grinned after their bodies emerged into the light where all can see the ghastly formations of the infamous Erklings.

Alya groaned as she frustratingly rubbed her temple with her middle finger. "I'm getting tired of this."

Marinette's head spun rapidly towards her group-mates who were like a bunch of deers caught in the headlights. "Gryffindors! Step away from the edge! Head back to the forest!" She yelled at the top of her lungs that immediately alarmed the said group of wizards as they all proceeded with their leader's command, – the instant that the three feet tall creatures stepped foot on their area of grass paddings nearby the edge of the cliff, she had to leave the risk of her friends falling into an unknown island of white beneath them in exchange of battling against the pointed beasts – withdrawing their wands' tips to send magical jinxes across the heaps of elfish beasts prying at them on their two feet where they claimed the teenagers' fleeting footsteps for a game of tag.