Changeling Witch

School's Out

Amity straightened. "Oh! Principal Bump! I didn't expect to---"

"Not now, Amity," Bump said, waving a hand at her. "I'm here about Mr. Porter."

Gus tried and failed to not look nervous. "Wh---what's the trouble, Principal?"

"Well, I'm here about your famed illusion," Principal Bump told him. "When Mr. Blight told me about it, I had no choice but to see." He peered at Hunter in a way that made him feel like he was being dissected. "Hmm. It looks a little different."

"Different how, sir?" Gus asked.

"Well, Edric said that it had brown eyes, but its eyes have seemed to have changed color," Bump noted with a slight grin. "I don't believe that humans have red eyes, Augustus. I don't know how your teacher missed that."

"Oh, I---uh---remade it for Amity and Willow, since they wanted to see," he stammered. "I must've gotten that wrong."

Principal Bump nodded to Hunter. "Why don't you get it to remove its hood?"

Hunter slowly took off the hood of the cowl, gulping.

"How strange," Bump commented. "You got the size right, but not the shape. I would've thought with your interest in humans, you would've known to make its ears round."

"Oh, that's actually something that Mrs. Jenkinmeyer commented on!" Edric piped up, his smug grin widening. "Said his ears were perfectly round. Wonder how that changed, huh?"

Hunter's eyes darted around the classroom, looking for a way out of this. Eda's words surfaced in his mind---about how a good witch is always resourceful.

Thinking fast, he plunged his hand into his pocket, pulled out the slime ball, and threw it at Principal Bump's face.

"ARGH!" He wiped it off, sending it flying.

Willow picked it up, gasped, then drew a green circle in midair over it.

A mass of thorny vines shot out of it, bowling into both Edric and Bump and sending Gus, Hunter, and Amity flying out of the classroom.

"You guys go!" Willow called. "I'll catch up later!"

"What was that?" Hunter exclaimed as they ran down the hall. "Did that slime ball have some sort of---"

"It wasn't a slime ball, it was a seed!" Gus said. "Willow is seriously powerful at plant magic---it's lucky you had that on you!"

"Yeah, I... yeah." He started to feel a little bit guilty as he remembered why he had that on him. "Good thing someone told me to have it."

"No time for chit-chat!" Amity snapped, pulling them around the corner. "We've gotta get out of here before---"

Glowing red lines appeared along the walls as barriers of red light started to form around the exits.

"Oh no," Gus peeped. "We're sealed in."

A series of groaning noises sounded from behind them. Hunter turned around to see Bump with his hand outstretched---and a bunch of weird, purple, goo monsters with glowing eyes were shambling towards them.

"What are those things?" he whispered.

Amity stepped forward, cracking her knuckles with a confident grin. "Abominations. My specialty."

She drew a series of glowing magenta circles in midair, surrounding the Abominations with the same light. "Abominations---wreck havoc!"

That sent them off in every direction, one of them even tossing Principal Bump out of the way. Amity grabbed the boys by their sleeves and pulled them down the stairs to the first floor.