Leo
Leo didn’t have long to savor Ceri’s confession—and how wonderful it felt to confess himself—before the whispering started.
It seemed to be coming from just outside the door of the dining hall. Leo took his things with him to investigate. Regardless of what it was, he needed to find some place to store each object separately, per Ceri’s instructions. He figured he’d try Professor Idris’s office first. If he was wrong about this being a different time, he’d find the storage boxes there.
And if he was right, well, he’d have to make do with spreading the items around the school. Since Idris’s office was a good distance from all the places he’d likely need to go, he’d leave the ring, the most dangerous object, there.
As Leo reached the door, the whispering resolved into speech.
“Come closer,” it said.
It was a woman’s voice. For a moment, Leo thought it might be Ceri, but the voice was too low.
“I need you. Closer.”
Leo hesitated, his hand over the handle to the door. Something rattled within his bag.
Leo looked down to see what it was, and the doorknob began to turn back and forth.
The door wasn’t locked or even lockable as far as Leo could tell. Why wasn’t it opening?
He reached into the bag. The locket was humming with some kind of energy. When he withdrew it, the door rattled violently in its hinges.
“CLOSER!” the voice screamed.
Leo took off running. He ran into the toilets.
They didn’t have a lock.
He ran into a stall and locked it behind him.
He took out the journal and furiously scribbled a message to Ceri, begging for help.
The whispering was here.
He was trapped in here. He had to get out.
He burst open the toilet stall (nothing there) and ran from the toilets, through the dining hall to the door into the courtyard as the door burst open behind him. He didn’t have the nerve to look back, but he could sense it back there: something large and fast and angry.
Leo sprinted across the courtyard, past the yew, and into the dormitory on the other side.
He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know if he was still being chased.
He ran up the stairs and down the corridor to Ceri’s door.
It wasn’t her door, really, not yet, but it felt like the right place. He didn’t know how, but he knew it would be open.
He was right.
Leo slammed the door shut and locked it. He could hear movement in the hallway beyond and the clinking of metal in the bag as the locket tried to free itself again.
He sank to his knees in front of the door, peering through the keyhole.
As he saw what was chasing him lumber forward, he froze in fear.
It was a tarasque. A creature of myth with the head of a lion and an armored body that breathed poison and ate its enemies whole.
It had haunted his dreams since childhood. His parents had a book of Gallic children’s stories they liked to read to the young ones, and most of Leo’s siblings had loved it.
