Elementalism

The library was a mess. Paper had grown into a wiggling abomination that covered every available surface. Scrolls and papers, new and ancient, empty and fully coated with writing, spotless and ink stained. Everything was enwrapped.

Seokmin and Jisoo were standing outside, glancing through the half opened door.

“Do you think we should tell the authorities?” Seokmin wondered out loud.

“That’s a rhetorical question, right?” Jisoo gave back. “It’s paper. We brought hairspray and lighters. And I’m sure it was someone from our dorm that made this mess. It usually is. So let’s fix it first and then figure out what happened and who need to get one of Seungcheol’s sermons. Which are not in any way as good as church sermons.”

“Whatever you say. You have more magic experience than me, hyung.”

“Just with guitars.”

“Yeah. Still.”

“Anyhow… Attack!”

The boys rushed into the room, Jisoo’s rosaries clacking on his arms, Seokmin’s grin brightening the attack path.

They sprayed fire onto the nearest paper tendons. The vines struck back, attempting to slap the cans and lighters out of the attacker’s hands.

“Were not making any progress,” Seokmin said, eyes fixated on the vines that gave him the most trouble.

Even though most of the library was now on fire, the paper didn’t recede. Which was a problem of its own, but the most of the library being on fire was also one.

“I’m starting to think this wasn’t the best plan,” said Jisoo.

The sprinkler system activated with worrying delay. Water rained from the nozzles on the books and pages everywhere. All the paper vines turned to sludge. Even the harder parts of the library-monster became unstable.

The boys tore their way through the rapidly soaking paper and made it to the center of the mess. Neither were surprised to find the grimoire as the origin.

Its paper tentacles wiggled threateningly in their direction. They seemed unaffected by the water. And the book was still growing. More pages fell out, marked with cries for help.

“I think,” said Jisoo, “Cheollie’s in there.”

“How?”

“…Magic.”

“Right.”

“Yeah. How do we get him out?”

Seokmin glanced at the grimoire, trying to read it. That is, he read it the way you read a person’s face, not a book. “Well, if he fell in, maybe we can pull him out?”

“Makes as much sense as anything.”

The duo began to tear pages from the library relic, but the book wasn’t having any of that. It fought back. It slapped Jisoo with a loose hardcover, inflicted paper cuts on Seokmin’s arms and threw so much paper at them that they were effectively blinded.

Retreating a few steps the boys waded in the wet slush that had once been a paper forest, which was still melting around them, the last few fires getting extinguished.

“Any other ideas?” asked Seokmin. “I’m not getting any more paper cuts. I’ll tell headmaster-“

“Hey, I didn’t get any cuts.”

“Why not?”

Jisoo flashed his arms. They – together with his neck – were covered with rosaries.

“You’re basically armored,” said Seokmin.

“Maybe it’s more than that. Like with Chan’s demons.”

One look was enough to convey the entire plan. Jisoo slipped half his rosaries off and handed them over. The rest he took into his own hands.

As quickly as they could, the boys threw the necklaces over the oncoming paper flood and before long they had battled their way into the thicket of the grimoire itself. Again, they began tearing out pages, wrapping rosaries around the books exterior whenever possible.

Finally, a shoe became visible. The boys tore further into the pages, almost sinking into the grimoire themselves, but eventually they got to grab the offered foot and pulled. It was followed by a leg, then another struggling leg and hips connecting the two. Hands emerged from between the pages and helped along, pulling the trapped boy backwards out of his prison like a reverse birth.

With a deafening noise like a million papers tearing, one whole Seungcheol fell out. Sans shirt but with a lot of relief.

The half- boy crawled away from the book and gasped for air. “Th-thank you… I thought I was going to-“

A tentacle shot from the grimoire and snapped right around Seungcheol’s neck, squeezing the life out of him and dragging him back against his struggles. Jisoo smacked the last rosary down like a whip and the book closed itself, the tentacle retreating with a slurping sound.

Seungcheol collapsed on all fours, breath heavy. He was going to add quite a few rules to magic-book-use etiquette.

*************************

Once Mingyu was far enough from Jihoon to make sure the pink haired boy wouldn’t notice where he had left to, he ran the rest of the way. The demon’s directions had sounded plausible, albeit vague. Mingyu clutched his wand, always ready to fire, unsure what he was going to have to deal with.

The cave was where he had hoped to find it, and its entrance was many meters wide. The dim crimson light from outside only made it a few steps into the hole in the stone before fading out.

Only slowing down, but not stopping, Mingyu cast a light spell. As the darkness enveloped him, he shot the finished charm from his wand and got a white-blue shimmering orb for his efforts, which he dragged along like a helium balloon.

The cave turned into ruins. Pillars and arches lined the way deeper into the mountain. Down and inward. Down and inward. Always farther.

Several minutes of descent later, Mingyu exited into a wide open area, an ornate stone ceiling above him showing frescos of fights between wizards and dragons.

The bottom of the stone hall was a shallow lake. In its center was a huge altar – almost an island – covered with heaps of treasure. Gold and silver, jewelry and gem stones.

And around all those trinkets was a serpent, loosely wrapped around the altar, half in the water, its head on the biggest pile. The hundreds of meters long creature was sound asleep. Mingyu recognized it as an Imugi – a being that would turn into a dragon once it turned a thousand years old.

The wizard walked down into the water. He didn’t dare to cast any spells in vicinity of the massive, wizard fighting beast.

Instead he waded through the water that went barely up to his knees and hoped the waves he caused would not be enough to wake the Imugi. He moved carefully and made it all the way onto the artificial island.

The Adore-Me half was directly under the Imugi’s nose. Of course it was. This couldn’t be easy. Nothing ever was.

*************************

The entire class sprawled on conjured picnic blankets in front of the ruins of Castle Beach Excursion. The teacher had admitted that the building was the most impressive among the student’s creations but wanted to disqualify Jun, Jeonghan and Soonyoung. Both for accidentally creating a new species of hostile super crabs – plus inciting war with them and eradicating said new species – and because of the fact that the castle hadn’t survived.

Luckily the boys had a lot of crab meat with which to bribe the studentship and teachers.

So it came that – as the sun set over the class trippers – the smell of delicious delicacies filled the air. Jeonghan softly flapped his wings to keep the fire burning. Jun picked a piece of crab shell from his teeth, using his dadao which was comically big for the purpose. Soonyoung lay on his back and contemplated the day – or he tried to look like that was what he did. Truthfully he was about to fall asleep, his stomach full of meat. He only had to impress the teacher for a few more minutes, get an A+ and then he could drift off. It wasn’t every day that he had to join a battle with an army created by chance.

But at Pledis it was always nice to have something to point to as the weirdest thing that had happened in a while. It gave life a bit of structure to do so.

*************************

“Mingyu! Where have you been?”

“I just-“

“No more running off. You could have fallen into a ditch or gotten captured by the maneater Dokkaebi tribe. Did you know there are Imugi living in the area?”

“Yes… I mean no, sir.”

Jihoon sighed loudly. “Well, while you’ve been slacking off somewhere I was busy collecting. Let’s go home.”

“Yes, please.”

“I’m calling Jun. Did this little trip yield the result you wanted?”

“Sure did, cutie pie,” said Mingyu, petting the side of his pants were a half disk imprinted against the pant fabric.

“I told you before, I’m not cute,” said Jihoon very threateningly – but also very cutely.

*************************

Having been a flock of birds was weird. Getting to think “having been a flock of birds” was also weird. The entire day had been one of the stranger one’s for Wonwoo.

He walked carefully through the corridors of Pledis, not wanting to fall over some sort of magical contraption and lose the amulet at the last moment. The world seemed to like doing those things to him lately.

He made it all the way back into his room, where he took the Adore-Me out of his beanie and stowed it away in his pocket. Never again was he going to let a randomly summoned fire demon destroy his hard earned magical artefacts. Which was also weird thing to think.

Remembering the demon also reminded him of his promise to Chan’s wand.

He walked into the boy’s room and planted the stick on the desk where he had found it. The chocolate was still there so Chan likely hadn’t been back to notice the theft yet. All the better.

On his way back into his room he met Seungcheol being dragged along by Jisoo and Seokmin.

“Hey, Cheol. Where is your shirt?”

“A book ate it.”

“I see. Have a nice evening.”

Jisoo stopped Wonwoo. “You’re coming to dinner right? We’re having chicken. It will heal your heart.”

“Sure… when did I ever miss dinner? Heal my h- never mind. I don’t even want to know what’s going on. I had my own adventure.”

Chan came around the corner and stopped with wide eyes when he saw shirtless Seungcheol. His face scrunched up and everybody could guess he was trying to remember if the leader’s state could be somehow his fault.

“Channie?” Seungcheol said, with a low voice, “Did you leave the grimoire open?”

“No, and I did nothing else either. A totally event-free day. Didn’t even touch my wand. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the rest of the dino troopers asked me to bring more spices. I heard we’re having chicken tonight.”

Chan went his merry way and the others dispersed as well. When Seungcheol passed Wonwoo he glanced back for a moment. “Did that kid say… dino troopers?”