Brandon Sanderson - The Rithmatist

Dusts!

Joel screamed for help, slamming his fists against the invisible barrier. It all made sense! Why attack the students outside campus? Why take the son of the knight-senator?

To inspire panic. To make the Rithmatic students all congregate at Armedius, rather than staying at their homes. Harding had secured the campus, brought all of the Rithmatists here, including the half who normally lived far away, and had locked them in the dorms.

That way, he had them all together and could take them in one strike.

Joel continued to pound uselessly at the walls of his invisible prison. He yelled, but as soon as his voice reached a certain decibel, the excess vanished. He glanced to the side, and there saw one of the Lines of Silencing, hidden against the white of the painted wall. It was far enough away that it only sucked in his voice when he yelled, not when he spoke normally.

Joel cursed, falling to his knees. Harding dismissed the Line of Forbiddance in the hallway, the one Joel had run into, and the multitude of chalklings swarmed forward and surrounded Professor Nalizar, attacking his defenses. The man worked quickly, reaching out of his circle and drawing Lines of Vigor to shoot off pieces of chalklings. That didn’t seem to have much effect. The formless chalklings just grew the pieces back.

Joel pushed at the base of his prison, looking for the place that felt the weakest. He found a section that Nalizar had drawn with his foot that pushed back with less strength. The chalk there wasn’t as straight.

Joel licked his finger and began to rub at the base of the line. It was a poor tactic. Lines of Forbiddance were the strongest of the four. He could only rub at the side, carefully wearing away the line bit by bit. It was a process that the books said could take hours.

Nalizar was not faring well. Though he’d drawn a brilliant defense, there were just so many chalklings. Inspector Harding stood shadowed in the darkness. He barely seemed to move, just a smiling, dark statue.

His arm moved, the rest of him completely still. He lowered the tip of his rifle, and Joel could see a bit of chalk taped to it. Harding drew a Line of Vigor on the ground.

Only it wasn’t a Line of Vigor. It was too sharp—instead of curves, it had jagged tips. Like the second new Rithmatic line they had found at Lilly Whiting’s house. Joel had almost forgotten about that one.

This new line shot forward like a Line of Vigor, punching through several of Harding’s own chalklings before hitting the defenses. Nalizar cursed, reaching forward to draw a curve and repair the piece that had been blown away.

His sleeve dripped acid. That acid fell right on his circle, making a hole in it. Nalizar stared at the hole, and the chalklings shied away from the acid. Then, one threw itself at the drop, getting dissolved. Another followed. That diluted the acid, for the next one that touched the acid didn’t vanish. It began attacking the sides of the hole the acid had made.

“You are making a mistake,” Nalizar said, looking up at Harding.

Harding drew another 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 direction. Joel pulled Melody toward the stairs, but froze as he saw another group of chalklings coming from that direction.

They were surrounded.

“Oh dusts, oh dusts, oh dusts,” Melody said. She fell to her knees and drew a circle around them, then added a Square of Forbiddance around it. “We’re doomed. We’re going to die.”