Chapter 5: Straight to HELL

"Niki," Liz poked me in the back with a pencil, "have you heard that girls are disappearing around here?"

The Biology classroom was dark – the light from the windows was blocked by the branches and leaves of plants. The teacher – an unremarkable quiet middle-aged woman in a beige sweater and thick glasses – was especially fond of monstera and palm trees. On the windowsills, like in a dense tropical forest, real thickets towered. And there were also many cats of various colors freely walking around the classroom, jumping on chairs and desks, rubbing against students. Ginger, gray, tortoiseshell, tabby, black with white paws, and of course, pure black.

One cat looked plumper than the others and walked slowly – she seemed to be pregnant. When she jumped, not without difficulty, onto the teacher's desk and lay down right on the gradebook, Ms. Alexis, smiling modestly, didn't chase her away to take attendance. She only mentioned, for some reason, while gently stroking the fluffy cat, that soon second-year students who received C grades on their summer exam would face a retake. It turns out that in LIMBO you get immediately expelled for an F, but C-s are allowed to be retaken if you don't accumulate more than five of them during your entire studies. I didn't listen to the rest.

"What do you mean 'disappearing'?" I turned to Liz. "From where? And to where?!"

"From the dorm. And where to – nobody can tell you that. None of them have been found yet…"

Interrupted by our chatter, the Biology teacher sighed. She was silent for a bit, trying to regain her lost train of thought, then adjusted her ponytail of dull blonde hair – for which I privately nicknamed her "Gray Mouse" – and continued speaking. Something about that for "S" group students her subject is one of the core ones, and at the exam, unlike others, they will have to complete not a theory test, but a complex practical task. This did not apply to Liz and me, so after being quiet for half a minute, we got back to our conversation.

"The dorm, as you know, is just two steps from the institute!" the redhead whispered. "But they leave their evening extra classes, swipe their passes at the turnstiles, and that's it."

"When did this start?"

"Since March they disappeared once a month. On the new moon. On the twenty-ninth day! Do you understand what that means?"

"No," I answered honestly, shuddering.

"It's the Satanic day!" Liz exclaimed, making big eyes. "Most likely, they're being sacrificed! There are rumors that it's someone from 'our own', because with our level of energy protection, no outsider could simply get inside! And certainly they wouldn't have learned the personal info about the missing students that only the rector and teachers know…"

"Hey, Charm, stop distracting!" Jake interrupted in a loud whisper. "I can't hear a damn thing Ms. Alexis is saying. You can gossip during the break."

"Anyway, Niki, just be careful there, okay?"

"But I'm… kind of immortal? And seemingly with superpowers?.."

"Ha! They know who they're dealing with. They'll tie a camel thread around your throat – and goodbye to your abilities."

"What do you mean?!"

"And also, they can draw a seal…"

Jake hissed again and gave us both a contemptuous look. His yellow eyes flashed angrily in the dimness of the classroom. So as not to piss him off, I finally turned away, opened my book to the first section, and immediately winced.

Almost the entire page of the textbook showed a red, haughty-looking camel with two humps, gazing at the viewer from under half-closed eyelids.

* * *

In short, Biology turned out to be not quite Biology, and the camel – not quite a camel. Among mages, the fluffy "ship of the desert" is considered an ancient archetype and an important occult symbol. The energy formed between the two humps of this animal, as between two poles of a magnet, "grounds" and locks a person in the limited dual world into which humans fell after the Fall, having tasted the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. An amulet made of camel hair destroys any witchcraft and makes it impossible: in the grounded physical reality, neither magic, nor regeneration, nor immortality simply exists.

The innate abilities of phoenixes and serpents can also be weakened by juniper resin smoke or dried and powdered mandrake root mixed with the juice of "nightshade" berries, also known as belladonna. However, these ingredients are extremely difficult to find nowadays, and it's even harder to find a chemist who would agree to work with them.

Speaking of Chemistry – it also turned out to be not quite Chemistry. We were told something about the types of primary elements – earth, water, fire, air, and ether. About sulfur and mercury, representing male and female principles. About the "sacred coitus" – the union of the sun and the moon, good and evil, left and right brain hemispheres, the phoenix and the dragon – to generate the Great Unity, that is, a state in which a person is capable of anything.

The teacher was a slender lady in her forties with a bright red mane of hair loose on her shoulders. When she sat at the desk, from afar it looked as if chemical reagents had exploded on the lectern and a fire had started. Perhaps not only her appearance is explosive, but also her temperament – I thought apprehensively. So this time I honestly tried to listen to the lecture, although the information was still very difficult to comprehend.

Transmutation? Tincture?? Alchemical androgyne??? I had a solid A in Chemistry at school, but here in the first few minutes it became clear – I can immediately forget about school knowledge. It seems the teacher said just that, but at first I didn't believe her – I think, all of them say that. And now I understand that she wasn't joking at all.

The course program was divided into two parts: the first semester was given to students for internal alchemy – changes in thoughts, feelings, perception of things, lifestyle; and the second involved working with solid matter – that is, external alchemy.

"So, we'll be able to turn pebbles into gold?" Jake couldn't hold back.

"Theoretically, yes, Brittlegill. You will."

"And practically?"

"And practically, I advise you to start small, since gold is the most dangerous element of the entire periodic table. Not mercury, not arsenic, not lead – no. It's gold. It generates greed and avarice inside the cauldron of an immature neophyte, and these two vices, as you know, are death for the soul. Like an ever-hungry fire, they will destroy all your achievements of the first year, and you'll have to start the transformation from scratch. Is that clear?"

"Clear," he sighed. "Getting rich won't work."

"It will work, Brittlegill. But true wealth has nothing to do with gold."

Jake, who during the break told us that he and his mother live very poorly and he's been scraping by on various part-time jobs since he was fourteen, wasn't impressed by Agatha Asher's answer. He continued to sadly examine his torn, stained shirt – probably calculating in his mind how many more hours he would have to work as a courier or dog walker to buy himself a new one.

I didn't have time to go to the cafeteria after the second period and thought I'd have a snack during the next break, but in Law class, they killed our appetite by showing us a thick code that we would have to study and memorize by heart in six months.

Although, if you believe the lecturer, we were lucky in this regard, and the ancient sets of rules were even more voluminous and confusing. The teacher proudly boasted to us of her collection of legislative acts and commentaries on them – so impressive that when I entered the classroom, I first thought I had mixed up the rooms and ended up in the library.

The walls of the room were stacked with books up to the ceiling. Many of them looked like real rarities: ancient, time-cracked bindings with ornate signatures in old or even magical languages.

"These are not just rules," the thin old woman with a gray bun on the top of her head was pontificating from her lectern. "This is the story of how phoenixes, serpents and humans learned to coexist peacefully, live and interact together without interfering with each other…"

In ancient times, people obeyed the immortals in everything, relying entirely on their will as the voice of heaven, but nowadays the situation has changed. "Peaceful coexistence" meant that it was the phoenixes and serpents who obeyed the laws written for them by humans. And even teaching at LIMBO is only for humans – eternal beings are by no means allowed in the educational process. I wonder then how people like us can be useful to the special services?..

"Ms. Williams," I raised my hand. "I have a question. Tell me, will we be taught here to kill people?"

"Nicole, you're going straight for the jugular," the granny tsked. "It's fine with me – the criminal code has tempered me – but it's better not to bluntly ask such a question to other teachers."

"And yet?.."

"You will we be taught here not to kill people, Miss Antipova. Moreover, what does our first commandment say?.." she adjusted her thick-framed glasses and answered herself. "That's right, 'Thou shalt not kill'. Therefore, remember this: any of you who, intentionally or accidentally, kills a mortal human, will immediately be sent from LIMBO straight to HELL."

"To hell?"

"Not to hell, but to HELL," Ms. Williams emphasized these letters with a special intonation, making scary eyes. "To the Highest Enforcement Lawkeeper League of the FSB. In other words, behind bars."

"And what sentence do they give to people like us for murder?"

"Article 1286 paragraph 33, my girl."

The silence in the classroom was replaced by the noise of rapidly turning pages.

"Life imprisonment!" someone breathed out from the back row.

"Well done, Mr. Witchman. You've earned a plus in the gradebook today."

"And five pluses – is that an A?.."

"Wait a minute," I interrupted my classmate. Witchman's pluses didn't concern me at all. "What do you mean life imprisonment?! We're immortal!"

"That's the point, Miss Antipova. That's the point. Therefore, accustom yourself to self-control from a young age, study His Majesty the Law, and be careful."

The smell of my favorite soup, which reached my nose from the lower floor, didn't help the situation. During the next break, I didn't go to the cafeteria again. Though Jake shared a sandwich with me – with cabbage, dill and soy cheese. He turned out to be a vegan – he hasn't eaten meat or milk since childhood.

So as not to offend my new friend, I crunched on the bland sandwich. The tension inside was growing proportionally to the increasing lack of understanding of what was going on. This probably isn't a joke or even a bad dream – although with each new lesson, I wanted to wake up more and more.

The Geography teacher's classroom resembled a pompous museum hall where an exhibition of fantastic creatures based on paintings by either Bosch or Dali was taking place. From every painting and sculpture, monsters were looking at us: demons, dragons and snakes, people with animal heads, animals with human heads, many-armed and many-legged creatures, many-eyed and many-headed, armed to the teeth, dancing, fighting, devouring each other or copulating. Many of them were depicted so realistically that it seemed they were about to come to life at any moment – jump off their pedestals or step out of the canvases.

Jake whispered that the geographer's hobby is to search all over the world for artists and sculptors who were "lucky" enough to come face to face with unusual creatures and capture them in their work. Most of the masters paid a high price for such a portion of inspiration – many lost their minds, and a few even took their own lives. And, I think, I could partly understand them.

After we spent the whole lesson drawing a contour map of the lower astral world, everyone became dejected – even the tireless Jake the Snake. Sighing over the atlas, the guy was scratching with his pencil lead, meticulously copying the hierarchy of entities: demons, devils, succubi, possessors, parasites, restless spirits, larvae… There turned out to be a great multitude of them in the lower astral – as if useful minerals on the map of Russia, and by the end of the lesson, they had sucked all the strength out of us.

The teacher – a tall, thin man with a big nose – at the very beginning of the class apologized and said that he urgently needed to step away for an important matter. He gave us the assignment, then sat down at the teacher's desk, folded his hands, closed his eyes, took a deep breath – and no longer reacted to anything. He probably really went very far away – to another city or country, or even to another planet – and couldn't hear us from there. He didn't return even when the bell rang with a muffled chime, and the students jumped up from their desks with relief.

"So, instead of Biology, we have Bioenergetics…" I mused aloud, tossing aside my pencil. "Instead of Chemistry – Alchemy, and instead of Geography – Astral Travel. And it's even clear why we need Law – to subdue the rebellious immortal spirit. But why on earth do we need Art History?!"

"And as the fifth period, no less," Jake grumbled discontentedly, stretching his back. "Some kind of mockery of students! Hey, what if we…"

"Let's at least go see what the classroom looks like," Liz quickly helped me stuff my things into the bag and pulled me down the corridor, away from Brittlegill.

However, no matter how hard she tried to get rid of him, when we went up to the third floor to the right classroom, the guy had somehow already made it there. His yellow eyes with narrow pupils sparkled brighter than usual:

"What if we blow it off!" Jake blurted out joyfully, meeting us at the threshold.

Well, definitely The Tempting Serpent!

"The offer is attractive, of course," I carefully replied, dropping my bag on the nearest desk. "But to start the first of September like this, with skipping…"

"You know, Gill is right in some way," Lizzy unexpectedly agreed. "Last year we didn't have such a subject at all. Clearly, this is some kind of crap to fill the norm of hours. And the introductory lesson is always boring, we won't miss anything interesting."

"Liz, do you want to be left in the first year for the third time?" I chided her.

"Well, do as you like," Jake exclaimed heatedly, waving his hand, "but personally, I'm exhausted to death! I'm going to the dorm to catch up on sleep!.."

I opened my mouth to remind him that an immortal, with all his desire, cannot get exhausted "to death," but then from the corridor came a gloomy:

"You can sleep when you're dead."

Well, well! Could it be that the teacher of the nobody-needs Art History came earlier than usual?! And even caught the truants red-handed! What an awkward acquaintance it turned out to be…

"Get to the classroom," a cool, I would even say indifferent voice, but so authoritative that it's impossible not to obey. "Now."

Everyone fell silent. The chubby girl behind even stopped crunching chips and hid the rustling bag far away. The would-be truants tumbled into the room as if blown in by a gusty wind.

I recognized him – even before he entered. The smell of withered leaves, an approaching thunderstorm, and sweet-sour fresh blood burst into the spacious hall. Everything around flowed in hot waves, like last night, and I almost lost consciousness again.

More than anything in the world, I was afraid that my nightmares would start coming true.