The day Almadel fell

The ceiling was bowing inward. Not cracking or sagging — it was as though reality itself was warping, bending downward, curving out towards where they stood.

Jeremiah was searching madly through his desk, slamming drawers open and closed.

"What's happening?" asked Trix

"Andras! Must be! I've never seen anything like this" said Jeremiah, voice muffled as he ducked beneath the desk to peer into a drawer, "it does rather remind me of some descriptions in the Maleficarum Magicae...I do hope I'm wrong. Usually the stories end with a person missing, big smoking hole in the ground where they once stood, so on and so forth. Of course this is much too big to be that—"

Trix's vision began to swim, the room around her becoming blurred and wavy. She held her hand up to her face to check her eyes and saw her fingers curve and bend impossibly. The distortion seemed to be expanding downward. She heard Dean shout something, but the sound was distorted.

"What should we do!" she yelled at Jeremiah, the sound coming out as a low buzzing. She dropped to the ground, her vision clearing immediately, like dropping below a layer of invisible fog. She saw that Dean had done the same, and was pulling at Wilbur and Emma's legs to get them to drop also. "What should we do?" she screamed again.

"I'm going to try to stop it here, get out of here now!" Jeremiah's voice sound bounced and twisted in her head, the distortion was almost at the floor. She could feel it moving down her back, the pressure in her head was intense, making it hard to think. She forced herself to begin crawling toward the door, but she wasn't even sure where the epicenter was, was she moving towards it or away? The door itself was bending into an S shape, floating backward and forwards like seaweed in the tide. She felt that if she didn't grip the floor very hard she would begin rolling back and forth on the floor. Nausea grew in her stomach.

To her right, Emma rolled over on her back, eyes clenched in pain. Trix couldn't see Dean anymore, or Wilbur. She lay as flat as she could to clear her vision slightly and looked back over her shoulder, do I die now? she thought. She saw Jeremiah stand up, his long body squirming, noodle-like, he had his eyes closed as he staggered out from behind the desk, in his hand he held a perfect sphere of white porcelain. It was the size of a melon and the walls were so thin as to be translucent. Its surface was covered with red and brown swirled markings much like the pattern she had seen on the key to Salomé's door.

Jeremiah staggered again, almost falling, but caught himself on the desk with his elbow. He struggled back to his feet, eyes still tightly closed, and raised the sphere above his head. He flung it at the floor. Trix watched it fly downwards in slow motion, it reached the ground and stopped dead with the sound of a bell being run, not cracking or bouncing. Trix felt a pulling sensation, like she had felt when the key broke, but moving in the opposite direction, it was as though the sphere was pulling something through her, collecting it inside itself. She was still facing away from it, looking back over her shoulder, so she felt the distortion leave her face, first. The pain and confusion draining from her head, sucked away into the sphere. It continued down her prone body, the room returning to normal. She breathed heavily, relief filling her.

Jeremiah sat on his desk, looking smug. "What hubris, to spread his attack over such a large area. How many lives did you sacrifice for this, Andras?" He strolled over to where the sphere was stuck, still immobile on the floor where it had been thrown. Now that her vision had cleared, Trix could see that it was vibrating ever so slightly. Then the brief respite ended. The sphere exploded, throwing shards of porcelain through the room. Jeremiah was flung backwards and Trix was pushed further towards the door, her head thudding thickly against the frame. Her vision swam, then she felt the distortion flowing back out from where the sphere had caught it, slipping up her body and filling the room again. Darkness encroached at the edge of her vision and knew she was falling unconscious. She struggled to stay awake, she no longer knew where she was, which direction was up and which was down. A new burst of pain appeared in her arm and she vomited powerfully, her body shaking with the effort, then the blackness swallowed her.

Dean saw consciousness leave Trix's eyes, he had been pushed from her by the blast, and couldn't tell through the distortion if she was hurt, or bleeding. Everything had gone wavy again after the ball exploded. He could see it spreading back out through the room, but this time it seemed to stop just past the open door to the classroom. Half of the corridor was shimmering back and forth while the wall opposite stood reassuringly straight. He focused on that point like a drunk person navigating their way down a rocking train car, trying to calm his spinning mind enough to decide what he should do. As he watched, the wall began to fade.

It was dissolving, fading out of existence, replaced by a boiling, swirling mass of black and red and purple. Like storm clouds reflecting a forest fire. The room darkened, flooded with angry red light that cast long shadows. He looked behind him, the back wall of the classroom was gone, too, the edge of the room sliced perfectly, a semi-circular cut through the ceiling, the floor, the wall. A desk had been caught on the edge of the effect and was sliced neatly in half, the remaining part somehow remaining erect despite missing two of its legs. Half the corridor, two thirds of the classroom, part of the courtyard outside, and part of the neighbouring room: a perfect circle seemed to have been cut neatly out of existence and placed here to float amongst the burning red clouds.

The pain that Dean had felt since the ceiling first began to shift became ever stronger. It was no longer confined to his head, spikes of pain shot down his nerves, stabbing at his neck, his jaw, his teeth. The pressure came with it. He felt a cold sweat erupt painfully all over his body, his molars felt like they were being pumped full of air, he wished they would explode, shatter in his mouth and relieve the pain. Tears filled his eyes and he blinked them away furiously. He needed to see if everyone was still there, that he wasn't alone. Trix was no longer moving. He saw Wilbur lying next to him, opening and closing his mouth. Dean couldn't hear if he was saying anything over the thumping and rushing of blood in his ears. Emma was behind him somewhere, he tried to turn to find her but his muscles were no longer responding. Jeremiah was nowhere to be seen. Had he been thrown into that blackness by the blast? What was out there?

The pain grew again, it rang through every cell in his body, pushing out all other thought and feeling. Seconds passed. Years? He tried to shout out. Had he been shouting this whole time? How long had he been floating here? He noticed a screaming noise and was unsure if it was coming from his own mouth. He was no longer aware of his body, he had passed beyond, become a being of pure exquisite pain. His vision narrowed to a pinprick: a hinge on the door to the corridor. He focused on it madly, seeing every detail, every scratch, the colour and shape and how it was installed ever so slightly crooked. He felt that if he lost attention for an instant his self would be lost forever in that sea of pain. Then it stopped.

The pain cleared and Dean blinked as the red light was replaced by a soft pale glow, flooding through the holes in the walls. A warm breeze blew against his face. The air smelled different. Denser than it should. He suddenly remembered the only time he had been on a plane, they had taken off from a wintery London and flown to Australia to see family, and the blast of warmth, humidity, unknown smells when he stepped off the plane was just like this, some primal part of his mind horrified at the sudden shift from winter to summer. Were they in Australia? No...probably not.

He struggled to sit up and looked around. Mist partly obscured his vision. Much of the classroom was still there, the desk that had been standing earlier had now toppled over, as had the back wall of the room. He rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled over to where Trix was laying. His whole body screamed in pain, every muscle fiber seemed to be torn, had he been contracting them through the pain? He couldn't remember anything of the last few..however long it had been. He could see Trix breathing. "Trix? Trix?" he said, his voice hoarse. He shook her but she didn't wake. He checked on Emma and Wilbur too. Both were also unconscious but breathing. He felt jealous that they had missed some of the pain he had just been through.

Beyond the holes in the walls he could see only a thick white mist. It was rolling down from the sky through the opening where the ceiling had once been, a column forming in the middle of the room, bringing with it moisture, warmth and a thick grassy smell he couldn't quite place. The sunlight filtered through, casting a dreamy white light on everything. He staggered towards the door, pulling himself through, out into the mist.