The Claddagh Academy

The Nuckelavee

Blaise 

            “Could it be a Ball and Chain charm?” I asked to no one in specific and Kodiak shook his head slowly, still studying Aella’s hands with scrutiny. He glanced at me with a smirk and then looked back at the wounds with the eye shaped scratches.

            “I use Mandrake dust on you one time and now you think all monsters play the same tricks,” he clicked his tongue at me with a patronizing air making me groan.

            “Do you have any better ideas about what we are facing?” I asked him, folding my arms and arching an eyebrow at him. Kodiak sighed and took a step back from Aella, who was sleeping over one of the tiny beds at the infirmary. Cauldron and Professor Cicerone were talking to doctor Castor by the back of the room and their murmurs were making me nervous. Whatever they were saying they didn’t want to share it with us and that riled me up. I had been groomed to seek justice since I was a child and I was desperate to go out there and find whoever had hurt Aella. Not that we had ever been BFFs or anything close to it, but I was also a girl and I liked to think that if I was the one in her position I would have people around me that would care enough to seek retribution.

            After finding her sobbing in the bathroom Aella had fainted. I’ve called Kodiak from the top of my lungs and he had shifted inside the bathroom. One look was all it took him to assess the situation and take Aella to the infirmary. We had been the only ones who had seen her like that and even if I could hear the rest of the Doomhold outside the infirmary anxious to know what was going on we had been asked to stay inside the room until Doctor Castor could treat Aella. Asked being the operative word. Nobody had dared to order Kodiak but they had looked at me while asking us to remain in the infirmary and not say a word to the others. Misogynist bastards.

            With Aella out of commission we had to wait for Doctor Castor assessment of the situation. So far I’d only seen him moving around his collection of books and passing pages while he seemed to look for something. The what eluded me. Whatever was happening to Aella seemed to me to be happening to her for weeks now. Ignatia had caught her crying about a month ago and I’d been too preoccupied with my quarrel against Kodiak to see the signs of sickness. Aella looked paler than normal and thinner, dark bruises had appeared under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept properly in days. The signs had been all there and no one had seen them. Which made me mad and angry. I definitely needed to kick someone’s ass to feel better now.

            “So?” I goaded and Kodiak looked down at me with a shadow of gravity in his eyes.

            “I think she has been possessed by a demon,” he said, making me shudder. Demonic possession was no joke. Normally demons tended to find it easier to possess humans and enjoyed toying with them since they had weaker natures and no magic to defend themselves. It wasn’t entirely unheard-of demons possessing Fae but it was uncommon. Fae normally tattooed themselves with runes of protection against possession, pain and corruptness as well as strength and other things but we were still minors for Faerie standards. Which left us wide open for demonic possession. If you asked me whoever had invented those rules was clearly deranged. I didn’t know jack about demonic possessions but Kodiak seemed to know more than what he was sharing and that wasn’t exactly recomforting.

            “How do we take the demon out of her then?” I asked and Kodiak’s jaw ticked while he stared at me with narrowed eyes.

            “We hire a human priest and he prays for her soul.”

            “Really?” I asked skeptical and Kodiak rolled his eyes.

            “No siren, no really. Try again, I know you can be pretty and smart when you put your head to it,” he said and it took all of my patience not to tell him that right then one of his wings had popped open for whatever reason. It arched majestically over his head and caught the lights of the lamps making it look almost bluish. I was positive he hadn’t even realized of the mishap so I was letting him be ignorant for a while. I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath.

            “Again Kodiak, how do we get rid of whatever is hurting her?”

            “You are close,” he said with a tilt of his head and I thought about the situation for a moment. Amadeus liked to say you first need to know what’s your poison so you look for the right antidote. If I applied his advice to this scenario then I supposed we first needed to understand who or what was hurting her in order to fight it. I said as much and Kodiak nodded.

            “We first need to know what type of demon is hurting her,” he said about the same time Doctor Castor exclaimed in victory and run over to us with a heavy book in his hands. Cicerone who by all intents and purposes was looking at me as if I was responsible for all his misfortunes came followed close by professor Cicerone. We made a circle around Castor and he turned the book around, showing us a macabre illustration that had me recoiling in disgust.

            There, poised like a malformed horseman riding a gigantic horse made of muscular tissue was a demon with dark eyes and crooked teeth. I could smell his reek from out of the book and all the way to Hell. That thing was monstrous in its wrongness. There was something twisted about a horse made out of veins and red tissue oozing blood. And on top of the ginormous horse was a tiny form that looked humanoid but his extremities were glued by interconnecting tissues to the horse. It was hard to tell where one started and the other one ended. In its totality I was completely sure Aella had won the lottery in respect to the meanest, ugliest and scariest demon in existence. I was scared to ask if that thing was what we will be fighting. I really hoped it was the cousin, twice removed to whatever the hell we were truly fighting.

            Of course we weren’t that lucky.

            “The Nuckelavee,” said Kodiak right from the bat and I raised my eyebrows at his quick answer.  Someone knew his fair share of knowledge about badass demons who liked to possess innocent princesses. It was a good thing Kodiak wasn’t reading my thoughts because he was all business a second after, “The mark of that demon is the weeping eye of Hell. The Nuckelavee is not a demon who likes wondering out of his realm. He had to be summoned and sealed inside of Aella and that requires someone a lot stronger than her.”

            “There aren’t that many Fae who could summon a demon like that straight from Hell,” said Cicerone with a pensive expression. Cauldron nodded while he fought to appease the wrinkles forming on his forehead.

            “King Meruen needs to learn this horrendous crime had been committed against her daughter. He will know what to do to help her. I will go and send him a message, please take care of her in my absence,” said Cauldron and rushed out of the room like always. Whenever one of his students was in the infirmary the man had only two ways to deal with it. Either blaming the students or ignoring them. The man was a compulsive escapist. I shook my head at his retreating back and once again wondered how he had ended being Claddagh’s principal. Cicerone sighed echoing the nature of my thoughts. I focused back in our dilemma.

            “Fine, so now we know what is hurting her. How do we kill it?” I asked and Kodiak shook his head at me.

            “For someone so small you sure are vindictive,” he told me while scratching the back of his neck and stretching like a lazy cat. I decided to ignore him and looked back to Doctor Castor.

            “So, how do we kill it?”

            “In my experience the best way to get rid of demons is fighting them face to face. We will need to break the seal and invoke the Nuckelavee to this plane so we can fight it,” explained the doctor and Cicerone intervened right away.

            “Not here. We should take Aella deep in the woods and far away from the school where no student can get harmed,” he said with a frown and I understood. If we invoked a demon inside the school chances were half the student population will break into hysterics while the other half would probably try to escape in disorder. The best way to deal with this situation was to isolate the demon and fight it far away, where it couldn’t harm any other student. I nodded and started calculating in my mind the minutes it will take me to go back the dorms and get my weapons ready. I was already imagining all the sweet ways I would use to kill the demon when I felt the distinctive tug of Kodiak getting inside my head. It felt as if he was knocking at an imaginary door right on my forehead. I shuddered and looked at him.

            “Was that necessary?” I asked and Kodiak smiled innocently.

            “I was making sure you weren’t getting lost inside you our own mind. Not that it looks that big,” he mentioned as an afterthought and I smirked.

            “One of your wings popped open,” I told him, pointing at the aforementioned wing and Kodiak cursed, looking at his back and frowning when he realized it was true what I’ve just said. The lonely wing fluttered and then shrunk inside Kodiak’s shoulders. He turned to me with a furrowed brow.

            “That didn’t happen, okay?”

            “Whatever,” I rolled my eyes and looked at Cicerone and Castor, who seemed to be entertaining themselves at our expense all this time, “ Gentlemen and… Kodiak, I think that the best course of action would be to gather some good fighters and attack the demon in a group. Kodiak, does Agnarok and Rodo have any plans for this afternoon?”

            “Apart from drinking tea with their pinky fingers up and compare their beard’s length?” asked Kodiak to no one in specific making me scoff.

            “I’m being serious here,” Kodiak rolled his eyes at me.

            “And I’m obviously doing my manicure,” I snarled at that last comment but he decided to ignore my rage.  Kodiak came closer then and lifted an eyebrow at me, this time looking all serious and stuff, “Listen here. I know you have fought all your life out there and that you find it entertaining to kill evil bastards that ought to be killed but this is not an evil bastard. We are talking about a creature so repulsive that wasn’t even born, was forged in the flames of Hell. This kill is out of your league, siren.”

            I frowned and shrugged.

            “So?”

            “You are not taking a participative role in this little social gathering at the woods,” said Kodiak and deadpanned his words with a nod, before turning around and taking long strides out of the infirmary. I felt my mouth hit the floor in shock. And to make things even more awkward professor Cicerone and Doctor Castor gave me sad little smiles that made me feel pitiful. He hadn’t made me a damsel in distress right then! Oh no! I refused! I groaned and run fast after Kodiak, reaching his side in just a matter of seconds.

            “What makes you believe you can stop me from fighting the Nuckelavee?” Kodiak looked at me through his peripherals while we walked.

            “You do know I am a king, don’t you? I can stop you from fighting if that’s what I want,” I smirked at that.

            “Do you really want to play that card right now?” Kodiak stopped looking positive angry and his wings opened all the way up, casting long shadows over me. His golden eyes focused on me with an intensity that spoke volumes. And there, just for a second, I was again looking at the king and not the Kodiak I’ve been talking to at the cafeteria a mere hour ago.

            “Play? Do you think I’m playing games?” Kodiak shook his head, his bluish hair looking strangely blacker under the shadows of his wings, “There are over two thousand students at this school right now that need protection. Around the grounds and in the forest I can count more than a thousand creatures that can be directly affected by a demon fight. I don’t need help fighting the Nuckelavee. That I can do with my eyes closed. What I need from you is to be my eyes and my hands while I’m away, taking care of my land. Is that clear?”

            I looked down and fisted my hands to control myself from punching a wall in anger. Kodiak was right. Of course he was. Why taking a group with him if he could kill the Nuckelavee alone? More of a reason for him to keep me away if he considered that the Nuckelavee was out of my league. And then again I could be of help to him if I stayed in the castle and make sure everyone was protected and safe. I felt him move closer and in silence Kodiak took my hand. It looked small in comparison to his long, strong and calloused fingers.

            “Stay here and protect Karoo for me, would you?” he asked me and I nodded, still looking down. I waited until a moment had passed and then I looked up and stared at his golden eyes. Our eyes connected and neither of us looked away. Then I smiled and pointed a finger up.

            “Your wings are out again,” I whispered and Kodiak rolled his eyes, retracted them and walked away while shaking his head at himself.