School for Good and Evil - OC (WINX CLUB)

THE CRYPT KEEPER'S SOLUTION

Shira was bored in her room and decided to read one of her books. The cover was silver silk, painted with the glowing Storian clutched between black and white swans.

A Student’s History of the Woods
AUGUST A. SADER

Shira opened to the first page.
“This book reflects the views of its author ONLY. Professor Sader’s interpretation of history is his alone and the faculty does not share it. Sincerely, Clarissa Dovey & Lady Lesso, Deans of the School for Good and Evil.”

Shira felt that the faculty disapproved of the book in her hands. The difference between a princess and a witch . . . the proof of Good and Evil were balanced. . . . Could they be the same?

She flipped the page to start, but it didn’t have words. Splashed across it were patterns of embossed dots in a rainbow of colors, small as pinheads.

Shira turned the page. More dots. She tore through fistfuls of pages. No words at all. She dumped her face on the book in frustration. Sader’s voice boomed:

“Chapter Fourteen: The Great War.”

Shira lurched up. Before her eyes, a ghostly three-dimensional scene melted into view atop the book page—a living diorama, colors gauzy like Sader’s paintings in the gallery.

She crouched to watch a silent vision unfold of three wizened old men, beards to the floor, standing in the School Master’s tower with hands united.

As the old men opened their hands, the gleaming Storian levitated out of them and over a familiar white stone table. Sader’s disembodied voice continued:

“Now remember from Chapter One, the Storian was placed at the School for Good and Evil by the Three Seers of the Endless Woods, who believed it the only place it could be protected from corruption . . .”

Shira gawked in disbelief. Sightless Sader couldn’t write history. But he could see it and wanted the same for his students. Every time she turned a page and touched the dots, living history came alive to his narration.

Most of Chapter 14 recounted what Beatrix had told her at lunch: that the School had been ruled by two sorcerer brothers, one Good, one Evil, whose love for each other overcame their loyalties to either side.

But in time, the Evil brother found love give way to temptation, until he saw only one obstacle between him and the pen’s infinite power . . . his own blood. For Shira, who was a twin, felt sick. To think of doing that to your own flesh and blood.

Shira’s hands swept over dots, scanning exhaustive scenes of Great War battles, alliances, betrayals to see how it all ended.

Her fingers stopped as she watched a familiar figure in silver robes and mask rise out of the burning carnage of battle, Storian in hand:

“From the final fight between Evil brother and Good brother, a victor emerged beholden to neither side. In the Great Truce, the triumphant School Master vowed to rise above Good and Evil and protect the balance for as long as he could keep himself alive. Neither side trusted the victor, of course. But they didn’t need to.”

The scene flashed to the dying brother, burning to ashes as he desperately stabbed his hand into the sky, unleashing a burst of silver light—

“For the dying brother used his final embers of magic to create a last spell against his twin: a way to prove Good and Evil still equal. As long as this proof stayed intact, then the Storian remained uncorrupted and the Woods in perfect balance. And as to what this proof is . . .”

Shira’s heart leapt—
“It remains in the School for Good and Evil to this very day.”
The scene went dark.
She turned the page urgently, touched the dots. Sader’s voice boomed—
“Chapter Fifteen: The Woodswide Roach Plague.”