The Rithmatist

jagged line. This one shot through the hole, hitting Nalizar and throwing him backward.
    Joel gaped. It’s a Line of Vigor that can affect more than chalk, he realized. That’s … that’s amazing!
    The scribbled, shifting chalklings withdrew. Nalizar lay in the middle of his circle, unconscious. Harding smiled, eyes shadowed, then walked to the next door in the hallway, one just to Joel’s right. Harding pushed it open, and Joel could see young women slumbering in the beds inside.
    Wild chalklings swarmed in behind Harding and flooded the room. Joel screamed, but the Line of Silencing stole his voice. One of the girls stirred, sitting up.
    The chalklings crawled over her, swarming her body. Her mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. Another Line of Silencing hung on the wall there, drawn to keep sound from waking the other students.
    Joel could only watch, banging against his invisible wall, as the girl shook and writhed, a group of the chalklings climbing into her mouth as she tried to scream. They pinched at her skin, causing pinpricks of blood. More and more of them crawled into her mouth.
    She didn’t stop shaking. She shook and shook, spasming, falling to the floor and rolling as she seemed to shrink and flatten. Her figure began to waver. Joel watched, horrified. Soon the girl was indistinguishable from the other scribbled chalklings.
    Harding watched with a broad grin, showing teeth, his eyes lost in shadow.
    “Why?” Joel demanded of him. “What is going on?”
    Harding made no reply as his chalklings took the other girls in the room. One by one, two other girls were consumed and transformed. The awful sight made Joel look away. The chalklings that had been dissolved in the acid were re-forming, pulling themselves out of the pool and coming back to life.
    Harding moved to the next room, passing Joel. He opened the door and stepped inside, and Joel could see a Line of Silencing had already been drawn on the door. Harding had probably done them all first.
    The scribbled chalklings flooded the hallway behind Harding, then disappeared into the room. Joel felt sick, thinking of the girls sleeping inside. He dropped to his knees and continued scratching at his line, trying to get through. He wasn’t doing much.
    A chalkling suddenly moved in front of him and began to attack the line.
    Joel jumped back, grabbing his coin and trying to use it to ward the creature away. It ignored both him and the coin.
    It was at that moment that Joel realized the chalkling was a unicorn.
    He glanced to the side, where a face peeked around the corner ahead of him, farther down the hallway. Melody drew another unicorn, sending it to help the first. Joel stepped back, amazed at how quickly the unicorn made holes in Nalizar’s line.
    She really is good with those, Joel thought as they broke through a large enough section for him to squeeze past. Sweating, he dashed to her.
    “Melody,” he whispered. As long as he didn’t yell, the Lines of Silencing wouldn’t steal his voice. The sound wouldn’t carry far enough, he guessed, to hit the lines and activate them.
    “Joel,” she said. “Something’s very wrong. There aren’t any policemen at the gates or at the office. I tried pounding on the doors of the professors, but nobody answered. Is that Professor Nalizar on the ground?”
    “Yes,” Joel said. “Melody, come on, we—”
    “You defeated him!” she said with surprise, standing.
    “No, I think I was wrong about him,” Joel said urgently. “We need to—”
    Harding stepped out of the room and looked toward them. He was between them and the way to the stairwell. Melody screamed, but most of it dampened, and Joel cursed, pulling her after him. Together, they scrambled farther down the hallway.
    The dormitory hallway was a square, with rooms on the inside and out. If they could go all the way around, they could get to the stairs.
    Melody ran beside him, then suddenly yanked him to the side. “My room,” she said, pointing. “Out the window.”
    Joel nodded. She threw open the door, and they were confronted by chalklings crawling in the open window, moving across the walls like a flood of white spiders. Harding had sent them around the outside of the building.
    Joel cursed, slamming the door as Melody screamed again. This scream was dampened less than the others; they were getting away from the Lines of Silencing.
    Chalklings crawled under the door. Others scurried down the hallway from Harding’s