Caitlin

November 25th, 2018

It was as if time froze when the spell hit Iris. I knew that spell. I knew what it could do even if I couldn't cast it myself. The moment it hits you you get blasted back with a powerful concentrated force that can be enough to fracture your bones. It's not necessarily always deadly but it can be used to kill. It's was basically the spell that blew her against the wall times ten. She couldn't grab her wand in time. By the time she had it raised the spell had already made contact with Iris. She could feel the whole room brace themselves. She could see Iris flying across the room, she had a plan, maybe if she could get there in time she could stall the damage. Something. But she couldn't. There was nothing she could do to help her friend. Nothing she had to do really. Because even though she saw the image of Iris being blasted to her doom in her mind, her eyes saw a very different situation.

What she actually saw, what actually happened, was the spell dissipating the moment it hit a braced-for-impact Iris. It didn't work. Iris's position didn't change. The whole room stood in their braced positions, as if they expected a delay. The first to move was Cassandra. Caitlin watched as the smile fell off her face. Caitlin lowered her wand in shock. Cisco and Ralph seemed to realize that Iris hadn't been affected and Barry was just laying on the ground, not moving, watching Iris with a fiercely protective gaze.

"That's impossible!" Cassandra said. It was at this point that Iris opened her eyes and the brace stance dropped. She checked herself over as if she couldn't believe it. Caitlin for sure couldn't. It hadn't worked. The spell hadn't worked. Just like her color spell the other day. "How did you do that?" Cassandra asked, rushing forwards and aiming her wand at Iris's neck.

"After what just happened do you really think another spell is going to fix anything?" Ralph asked. Cassandra turned her gaze to look at the man and Caitlin took her chance to strike.

"Elesp!" she called raising her wand once again. The caught off guard spell caster was hit by the spell and began to waver, stumbling away from Iris before falling to the ground in sleep. "Get her wand," she called. "She can't do anything without it." Iris, since she was right there Caitlin assumed, bent down and pulled the wand from the sleeping girls hands.

"We should put her in the cortex right?" Cisco asked. Caitlin nodded. Barry was staying on the ground, like he was unsure if he could move.

"She's disarmed and unconscious Barry," she said. "You should be able to stand now." As she said this, she was working through the pain to stand back up. She watched Barry tentatively stand up and upon doing so, speeding Cassandra to, she assumed, the pipeline. Iris was still standing, kind of frozen, holding Cassandra's wand.

"Iris?" Cisco asked, gently grabbing the wand from her. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little shook up."

"Why the hell didn't that kill you?" Caitlin asked when she finally regained her footing and approached the other female.

"Sorry to disappoint you Cait," Iris said.

"I know sorry," she said. "I mean, I'm glad you're okay but there is no reason for you to be okay. She has got to be at least a level seven and you just got hit head on with what is basically a bone crushing spell and you didn't even move a millimeter." It was at this point that Barry sped back in the room and Joe and Cecile appeared from the hallway.

"Ralph texted us, what happened?" Cecile asked, holding the baby. Caitlin shot him a look.

"So what, we're not supposed to tell them that Iris accidentally escaped death?" he asked.

"What?" Joe asked.

"Dad, I'm fine," she said.

"But she shouldn't be according to Caitlin," she said.

"Don't ever do that again," Barry said. "You scared me half to death, I will not have you die to save me. You saw how well your dying turned out last time for me. Savitar much?"

"Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, what happened?" Cecile asked.

"An evil spellcaster showed up, beat the crap out of us and then tried to kill Barry with some bone crushing spell but Iris jumped in the way of it last second and escaped without a scratch on her," Ralph said. "Now the girl is in the cortex and we have her wand." He pointed to Cisco on that last part.

"You would have died Iris," Caitlin said, seriously.

"Maybe she just didn't cast the spell right," Cisco said.

"There's no way, that spell could be cast by anyone level five or higher," she said. "For a level five it's possible but her skills were at least level seven. I would say it was potentially possible if the same thing hadn't happened yesterday with my color spell. There is a very very minute chance that it was just a coincidence both times. Something is stopping magic from affecting you Iris. At this point, the team started walking back into thee cortex, they had ended up in the hallway during the fight. Barry had his arm around Iris who pressed into him but looked lost in thought and worried.

"Caitlin, can you think of anything that would cause Iris to be immune to magic?" Joe asked.

"Either she is a very powerful, by birth or training, spellcaster who is either deliberately or subconsciously deflecting magic or there is a very powerful protection spell or charm on her," she said.

"Well, I'm definitely not a spellcaster, didn't you say it had to be genetic?" she asked.

"Most of the time but it is possible for a child of two mortal parents to have a magical child if at any point in their family's history there was someone of magical blood," she said. "It's rare but it happens, usually they have as much capacity for great power as anyone else, sometimes even more, but usually aren't born with a power like that. Even if you were born a spellcaster you would have had to have constant training to be able to block magic like you do."

"Okay, so what you are saying is that someone put a protection spell on Iris?" Cisco asked.

"I mean, maybe," she said. "It's possible that there is another avenue that I don't know about but that seems the most likely. The only problem is that I know for a fact that I didn't cast the spell on her and even if I did it wouldn't be that powerful. A charmed item would help strengthen it but it is hard to find something that can properly be bonded to a protection spell."

"Is it possible that she was just born immune to magic?" Cecile asked. "Like, maybe instead of being born with powers she was just born to deflect them?"

"I've never heard of that but I have been away for a while, maybe it's possible," Caitlin said. "Iris, would it be okay for me to test another spell on you? Just to see?" She glanced at Barry for a second before nodding.

"Yeah,yeah sure," she said. "Anything to figure this out." Iris took center stage and Iris took her stance.

"Okay, Iris, I'm going to tell you exactly the spell that I am going to cast and what it is going to do," she said. "I don't want you to fight it, I want you to just let it happen, okay?"

"Okay, got it," she said.

"I'm going to cast dirab," Caitlin told her. "It is a spell used to braid your hair. You ready?" Iris nodded and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes. Then Caitlin cast the spell. This time, the spell did work. Her hair was braided not a second later.

"It worked," Caitlin said under her breath.

"Maybe it was just a fluke with them not working on her?" Ralph asked.

"No, let me try something," Caitlin said. "This time I'm going to cast ginst. It imitates a bee sting. There should be a red mark where it hits and it will only sting for a few minutes."

"Why do we want to do this?" Iris asked. "The last one didn't work."

"I just want to test a theory," she told her. "I don't want you to resist the spell Iris. It will be over in a few minutes if it works and if it doesn't work then you have nothing to worry about."

"Okay, I'll be fine. No resistance," she said.

"You sure?" Caitlin asked.

"A little sting doesn't scare me, I can handle it," she replied. "Come at me."

"Ginst!" Caitlin called, raising her wand. She and Iris maintained eye contact the whole time. Sharking trust. When the spell made contact Iris didn't even flinch. Iris looked down and checked her left arm (the area where the spell hit) for red marks.

"Did you feel the sting?" Caitlin asked. Iris shook her head.

"So, good spells work, potentially dangerous ones don't," Cisco said.

"Yeah, but the color spell didn't work either and that was harmless," Barry said.

"That still could have been me," Caitlin said. "I'm not perfect."
"What if it didn't work because Iris didn't want it to," Ralph pondered. "She was trying to dodge the spell, she didn't want it to hit her, she imagined it as a threat so that's what it became and therefore didn't work."

"That actually makes some kind of sense," Joe said.

"Yeah, but it sounds more like an impossibly powerful protection spell like nothing I've ever encountered before," Caitlin said. "I have no idea what is going on with you Iris but I think we just got another hand up in whatever kind of crazy spellcaster shit is going on."

"What? No," Barry said. "We're not going to use Iris to get the upper hand battling spellcasters like Cassandra."

"Isn't that my choice?" Iris asked.

"It is but we don't know what this is, we don't know how it works, do you really want to take the chance of this going wrong?" he asked. "It is your choice okay, I'm not saying that it's not your choice but please, just think about this before you do anything crazy."

"Okay, fine, I'll think about it," she said.

"And I can run some more tests and check to see if it's anything in her genetic makeup," she said.

"So this is a thing now? Got it," Joe said. Cecile laughed and patted him on the back.

"Our lives did used to be semi normal right?" Cisco asked.

"At least no one is secretly heir to a long lost kingdom or anything," Ralph said laughing.

"Yeah, we've just about hit every movie trope at this point, might as well embrace it," Cisco said.

"If anyone was royalty I think it would be Iris," Caitlin retorted.

"Does that make me King?" Joe asked laughing.

"Stop it all of you," Cecile said. "Didn't someone mention an evil spellcaster in the pipeline?"

"Yeah, we should check on her," Caitlin said. "Cisco, care to help?"

"Sure," he said. "I want to figure out this girl is so vibe resistant anyway."

"Let's do this," Caitlin said and set off with her friend to interrogate the baddie in the pipeline. Little did they know, today was the iceberg, in a few days, it would be the titanic.