Chapter Text
When Ed told her that there could be secret passages in the walls of Hexside, Emira knew they just had to find them. It was too good of an opportunity to miss.
Another student in their grade claimed to have seen a wall open in the astronomy classroom. He couldn’t get it open himself, or even identify which wall it had been on, but reported the mystery to Ed. If anyone could find those passages and put them to good use, it would be the Blight twins. The same day they heard about it, they made sure to stay after school to investigate.
The location sighting was where the twins started their search, in the astronomy classroom. The door had already been locked for the day, but that had never stopped them before. Emira was getting quite good at opening locks with magic.
Once inside, they tapped on every wall to search for a hollow spot or a hidden door, but didn’t have any luck finding one. All the walls seemed to be normal solid walls.
Ed looked like he was thinking hard as he squinted at the astronomy markings on the walls. He had his arms crossed, posture slightly slouched.
“How about we split up.” Emira suggested, drawing his attention to her. “I’ll look in the downstairs rooms, you stay up here.” They might have better luck if they covered more ground.
“Alright.” Ed nodded with a sigh. “But I’m starting to think Kyle lied to us.”
“We’ll see.” They had just checked one room so far, so Emira wasn’t ready to give up yet. “See you at the front in an hour?”
“Yeah.” Ed waved her off with one hand, turning back to continue scrutinizing the wall.
Emira left him there, walking to the main staircase to head downstairs. There wasn’t a soul in the school at this time of day; it had been a few hours since school got out and most students were gone within half an hour of the last bell. Still, Emira exercised caution as she reached the stairs, casting a quick spell to enhance her hearing to listen for footsteps.
After a few moments of blessed silence, Emira released the spell and moved down the stairwell. She wasn’t sure which rooms were most likely to have the passages, so she just started with the classrooms in the back of the school.
The first few she checked were standard classrooms, ones with nothing particularly special about them. Emira checked the chalkboard and the back wall in each, but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.
Her luck changed when she reached the detention track room. At least, it used to be the detention track room. Emira remembered hearing that all of the detention track students had been assigned multiple tracks after Luz started at Hexside. It had definitely come up in Mittens’ many retellings of how Luz saved her from the basilisk.
There were still bars on the door, a reminder of what the room had been. Much to Emira’s surprise, when she reached to try and open the door it was already unlocked. That was quite strange, as every other classroom had been sealed shut.
Emira pushed the door open, glancing around the room as she entered. It had just a few tables and chairs in it, along with a blackboard and barred windows. When Emira ran her finger across the nearest table, she came back with a layer of dust. It looked like nobody had used this room in a while.
Emira moved away from the table to check out the chalkboard. It looked clean, without a speck of dust on it. Well, that was certainly strange.
Emira ran her hand across the board, pausing when she felt a faint pulse of magic.
Bingo.
She could feel the traces of magic on one part of the board. This was almost certainly the entrance to the secret passages. Or someone had been doing magic too close to the board and magically charged it, but Emira was pretty sure she was right.
Emira pulled her hand back and drew a magic circle, casting an unlocking spell. A square of what looked to be chalk appeared on the board, lighting up the room. There was a small keyhole in the center of the square.
The square of chalkboard shifted forward as if on a hinge, causing Emira to step back to avoid being hit by it. Inside she could see a straight corridor, leading to a regular door. It was decorated with a green “Keep Out!” sign and light could be seen underneath it.
She smiled; this had almost been too easy.
Emira lifted her leg to enter the small passage, barely able to squeeze through the entrance. The students who used this must’ve been smaller than her, in order to not get stuck.
The chalkboard door closed behind her as she entered, which cut off one of her sources of light, but the light from under the door ahead guided her path. After a few steps Emira reached the next door. She pulled it open, immediately gasping at what she saw.
On the other side of that door was a huge circular room that was lined from floor to ceiling with more doors. It rose up with a spiral ramp and had to be at least as tall as the school. On one wall there was a strangely graffitied painting of an orange haired teen, along with some graffiti tags.
Most surprising though was the presence of another witch. She was sitting low on the ramp, legs dangling over the side as she read from a large book. Her long brown hair was pulled into a bun and she had one large hook like earing in her right ear. She wore the Hexside school uniform, though it looked torn in a couple places. Interestingly, her sleeves were blue for the healing track and her leggings were orange for the beast keeping track.
Emira was pretty sure they had one class together, one of her general education classes. Her name was Viney.
She didn’t seem to notice when Emira entered the room.
After looking around for a few moments, Emira cleared her throat. “Nice room you have here.” She said, trying to give a sincere smile and not startle the room’s inhabitant.
Viney tensed, her green eyes shooting up to lock on Emira. “How…” She started to ask, then shook her head and started the question over. “What are you doing in here? This room is off limits.” She said, closing her book roughly. Her voice had a slight scratchiness to it.
“Just looking around. I heard a rumor today and wanted to check it out.” Emira played it cool, turning to look at the various doors around her. “Where do these doors lead?” She asked.
“Around the school.” Viney rose to her feet, leaving the book on the ramp. As she walked down to be on the base level, Emira noticed she was shorter than expected. Not only that, but the top of her uniform was held together with a small thorn shaped pin instead of a button. “Why do you want to know?” She asked in a cautious tone, like she thought Emira was up to no good.
“Just curious,” Emira pointed towards one of the doors, one that had similar decorations to the astronomy classroom walls. “So, would that one lead out to the astronomy room?”
Viney looked back over her shoulder to see which door, then nodded as she turned back to Emira. “Yes, it does.”
“Very interesting.” Emira was already concocting a plan in her mind. “If Ed is still in there, I bet I could jump out and scare him.” He would never see it coming, though he could’ve already left the room.
“That’s what you want to use the shortcuts for?” Viney crossed her arms, tone lowered. “You can’t just come in here and prank others. No way.” She frowned disapprovingly. Emira felt that, if this had been a test, she had already failed.
“It’ll only take a moment.” Emira persisted and tried to move around her to reach the ramp, but Viney stepped in her way.
“I said no.” Despite her shortness Viney’s posture was firm, her form unyielding.
Emira sighed. If she really wanted to, she could use magic to get around the other teen, but that didn’t seem like the best option here. She would probably just get reported to the principal and have to explain to her parents why she was lurking in the school after hours.
“Okay, I get it.” Emira took a step back, trying to deflate the tension in the room. “I’ll go.” She stepped away again, keeping her eyes on Viney.
The other teen didn’t move, just watched her go with narrowed green eyes.
When Emira reached the door she turned to push it open, quickly shutting it behind her when she made it through. She exited the chalkboard door the same way, squeezing back out of it.
Emira retraced her path back upstairs to the astronomy classroom to look for Ed. Of course, he had moved on by then, so she instead had to wait for him in front of the school. Emira chose a bench near the front door to wait on, keeping an ear out for trouble.
She still couldn’t believe what she had found. A room with doors that led throughout the school, it didn’t seem possible. They were probably magic doors, based on the school’s layout and formation of the doors inside.
It also seemed like the twins weren’t going to be able to use them freely, not with Viney guarding them. Not that Emira would let that stop her, she would find a way.
Viney had been so intriguing. Emira had class with her a few times a week, but they hadn’t spoken before. It was interesting how she was in two tracks and how she had access to the secret passages in the first place. Emira couldn’t help but be curious about her. She wondered how hard it would be to earn her approval, especially starting off with the first impression she just made.
“Did you find anything?” Ed’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“I sure did.”