by V. St. Clair
The Dark Prism:
A Father’s Dream
V. St. Clair
…some very few have even claimed to make direct contact with Magic, in its rawest, purest form. While it is easy to dismiss these accounts as delusion or fabrication, each of the sources claimed that while the Magic appeared to them in various guises—an effect of the brain trying to interpret something so far beyond its abilities?—that each of these apparitions shared the same eyes, the color of molten gold.
My concern with the essence of Magic trying to communicate with magekind—if one accepts these accounts as true—is that our brains are not in any way equipped to interpret such an awesome, powerful entity; we might as well be trying to communicate with the deities themselves.
And if we are hearing a garbled message from an entity so powerful, so far beyond us….what happens if we get the message wrong?
-Excerpt from A Theory of Abnormal Magic, mastery-level
1
A Total Lack of Talent
Michael Warren’s greatest contribution to their arena team was to act as bait, while the real mages ran around slaying monsters and earning points for it.
And here I spent all these years thinking he was useless.
It was an uncharitable thought, but Asher Masters felt no remorse for harboring it. Some people were meant to be great strategists, while others were great fighters, or great thinkers, or rarely even a combination of all three.
And some people were Michael Warren.
His teammate currently held the school record for highest number of fatalities during challenge arenas—an impressive feat, given that he was out-dying even level-two students who could barely tell which end of their wand to cast from. So far Michael had been stabbed, torn apart, eaten by numerous conjured monsters, impaled by an arrow, and once, even drowned in a lake that was only four feet deep.
The up-side of this was that while all the monsters were distracted trying to make Mizzenwald a Warren-free zone, Asher and his other two teammates were free to divide and conquer.
It also makes it easy to look good by comparison, he reflected cheerfully, scaling a sycamore to get a better vantage point of the arena while his teammates battled monsters below.
Finally climbing to a useful height on the gargantuan tree, Asher ignored the sounds of combat below him and peered out over the terrain, his view still partially obscured by trees, but not prohibitively. From this perspective, it was immediately apparent that they should head north as soon as they dispatched this group of seemingly ceaseless monsters.
He glanced down after a particularly shrill shriek from Michael, who was fumbling with a piece of conjury chalk while dodging a hyena. Asher barely suppressed a laugh when his teammate took an unwitting step backwards and fell straight into a hole in the ground.
I hope he didn’t die this time, he thought in amusement, watching the hyena prowl around the outskirts of the hole and snarl menacingly a few times. Maralynn gets so upset when we lose points because of his deaths.
He waited a moment longer, just until Michael’s situation was looking really dire, and then leapt from the tree to save the day, casting Slow on himself as he approached the ground to avoid breaking his legs from the fall. He landed lightly and cast Sear on a wolf that was approaching Maralynn from behind; his teammate hadn’t seen the predator, because she had finished with her last monster and was now leaned over the hole in the ground, attempting to help Michael out.
Asher jogged over to assist as more hyenas approached, focusing properly on their task for the first time since they’d entered the arena. It was one thing to let Michael get torn apart by conjured monsters, but quite another to leave Maralynn in danger, even in an arena.
He lifted a clear crystal prism in front of the violet one in his circlet, looked through both with his left eye and compounded Draw at the entire group of them, hyenas and teammates alike.
Maralynn let out a squeal of surprise as she was jerked backwards through the air, as though launched from a cannon, along with half a dozen hyenas. Asher moved deftly to catch her before she could fall, side-stepping the monsters that flew past him. Unfortunately, his other teammate, Tricia, got caught in the radius of the spell as well, and since he only had the two arms, she went hurtling past him and landed on her butt near the sycamore he had just jumped down from.
“Damn it, Asher!” she shouted from somewhere behind him.
“Sorry about that, Trish!” he called back cheerfully. “How’s the butt?”
He winked down at Maralynn, who was still in his arms and now spitting her own wavy brown hair out of her mouth.
Tricia stomped over to him, expression indignant and blond hair askew as she drew a mastery-level laurel wand and dispatched one of the hyenas before it could recover and attack again.
“Funny how you always seem to catch Maralynn when we’re in trouble and leave me to fend for myself,” she jabbed her wand forcefully at another hyena, inadvertently poking it in the eye as she cast Banish at it. “And I think my tailbone might be broken—thanks for asking,” she added angrily.
“Well then it’s a good thing I caught her instead of you; your butt has a lot more padding than hers, if you catch my drift. If the impact broke your tailbone, it might have seriously injured poor Mara.”
Asher laughed and braced reflexively for the punch to the gut that he was expecting from Tricia, turning slightly to deflect the worst of the blow. The girl could pack quite a punch, but he never seemed able to resist the urge to tease her.
“Stop messing around, you guys,” Maralynn pushed away from Asher and turned back to fight more hyenas. “We’re going to lose points for you all standing around wasting time, and Michael is still in that stupid hole.”
Asher sighed and left the two girls to battle the remaining monsters, while he went to help the useless sack of flesh that happened to be named Michael Warren. He personally didn’t care a thing for their challenge arena scores, but Maralynn always made a big fuss about it, and he happened to be quite fond of her, so he tried to avoid making her too upset.
“Hey Michael, are you alive down there?” he called out as he crouched down in the dirt at the edge of the hole. It wasn’t terribly deep, maybe twelve feet; not a far enough fall to kill him, but enough to prevent him from simply climbing out on his own.
Well, Aleric probably could climb a twelve-foot wall with no handholds, but he’s built like a gladiator.
His teammate was certainly no Aleric Frost. Michael had seen better days, his face plastered with sweat, and his arms and legs all scratched up from falling in a bush full of thorns earlier. He was standing upright but favoring one leg heavily.
“I think my ankle’s broken,” he admitted sheepishly, gesturing down to it.
“Bad luck,” Asher offered airily. “Conjure up a rope and toss it up here; I’ll tie the other end off to something so you can climb out.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Michael stared up at him in horror. “I just said my ankle is broken; how am I supposed to climb anything?”
Asher was about to recommend that he just stay in that hole and wait for more monsters to show up while the rest of them finished the arena, except Maralynn and Tricia had just joined them and the former said, “He’s joking, Michael. We’ll get you out of there.”
Actually, I wasn’t…
But Asher smiled brightly at her and said, “Of course I was. I’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.” Showing off for Mara was a favorite pastime of his.
He twisted the violet prism around in his eyepiece more rapidly than usual, determined to impress, and quickly found a useful alignment. He cast Suspend at his teammate, though he wa
s a little overzealous with his willpower, so that instead of Michael floating gently out of the hole, he shot out like a firework, screaming in terror until Asher dialed it down a bit and landed him gently on the ground.
“Thank you,” Mara told him softly, before hurrying off to give Michael a healing tincture so they could continue. For her gratitude, Asher would have carried Michael on his back while battling slavering hordes of chimaeras and dragons if he’d had to.
“Which way do we go from here?” Tricia asked him, clearly having seen him climb the sycamore earlier, or else she just assumed he was a natural navigator.
“North. We’re almost at the end of this thing,” Asher announced to general relief.
“How could you tell?” Michael asked from the ground, where he was gingerly trying to put weight on his newly-mended ankle.
Because I’m not a complete waste of magical talent, he thought dryly.
“There was a wicked-looking plain full of sharp rocks waiting for us, and the other ways all looked clear,” he explained pleasantly, leading the way. They all knew that the path that looked the most dangerous was always the right way to go. “Let’s be off before the sun goes down.”
The others fell into step behind him, though Tricia opted to walk beside him and asked, “How is everyone doing for weapons?” to the group at large. Tricia was usually the one to lead them, coaching them relentlessly on the importance of bringing the right weapons to the arenas and of using them wisely. Asher didn’t begrudge her the leadership role at all, because he couldn’t care less about their arena scores, and it clearly meant the world to her.
“I have half a stick of chalk left, plus a couple bandages,” Michael answered first, looking worried.
“Four powders, an oak wand, and a healing tincture,” Maralynn chimed in.
“Three wands for me,” Tricia went next. “Oak, cherry, and elm.”
“Two prisms; one violet and the other clear,” Asher went last, only then realizing that his Suspend spell had consumed the last of the violet prism that was in his circlet. Wordlessly, he reached into his belt and equipped another as they cleared the woods and approached the plains he had seen from the sycamore.
The sun was setting as they stared across the desolate plains, casting the world in an eerie purplish-orange glow. There was still enough light to see by that Asher immediately noticed his earlier mistake. What he had taken to be sharp rocks littering the entirety of the plain was in fact…
“Glass,” Maralynn whispered from just behind him. “Oh, I don’t like this at all.”
Asher could only silently agree. A field full of sharp, jagged pieces of glass covering the entirety of the walking space could not possibly bode well for them. He glanced up at the sky, where several birds of prey were circling overhead, staring down at them.
Glad the Masters have a front row view of this.
The others looked to him for direction, as they usually did when things got sticky, because he was inarguably the best at magic—or at least, the fastest thinker and most resourceful.
“Well, we won’t find out what fresh hell the Masters have in store for us until we walk out there and see what jumps out at us,” he suggested. “Try not to cut yourself on the shards of glass if possible.”
Taking his own advice, he led the way onto the eerily deserted plains, his senses at their peak as he moved forward, trying to look more nonchalant than he felt. For several minutes they walked in silence, waiting for something to jump out and attack them, though nothing so much as stirred. The only sounds at all were their footsteps crunching over broken glass as they walked, trying to avoid the shards that stuck up out of the ground as though glued in place.
The lack of action didn’t relax Asher one bit; if anything, it made him more tense, because he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. His nerves were taut as a bowstring, and he was just contemplating telling Michael to run up ahead and see if anything murdered him when he heard a scream behind him.
If Tricia hadn’t alerted him when she did, Asher wouldn’t have been able to dodge the enormous glass spear that launched out of the ground. Even with the warning it was a near miss, the glass grazing his shirtsleeve in passing.
Now the ground was rippling as though made of jelly, glass shards jutting upwards in all directions, forcing them to keep moving their feet to avoid being skewered. Some of the shards took flight like the first one, while others remained anchored to the floor, presenting a tripping hazard at best and an impalement hazard at worst.
Asher cursed softly and glared up at the owl that was watching from above, not knowing or caring which Master it was. What was the point of this entire section of the arena, except to try and kill them all? It wasn’t as though they were terribly likely to encounter this sort of obstacle in real life…
He pushed Michael out of the way of a piece of glass that would have skewered his neck had he been a second slower. His teammates were casting various Breaking spells at the glass around them as they tried to run across the plain to safety, with limited success. Tricia was attempting to shield herself instead of casting at the glass directly, which proved to be a mistake when a shard shot straight through the magical barrier and her right foot, pinning her to the ground and causing her to cry out in pain.
Asher ran to help her, dodging glass as his mind began to map the pattern it was making. Since this was made by the Masters, there had to be some sort of logic to it, and as he moved rapidly around the jutting pieces he began to make sense of it.
This has Sark’s name written all over it, he frowned, reaching Tricia at last.
“Sorry, this is going to hurt,” he informed her as he pulled her foot up from the ground, the glass sliding back through it and causing her to stifle another cry of pain. “Can you walk?” he asked, casually sidestepping another spear as it launched from the ground. His teammates were both way ahead of them in terms of crossing the plain, though they were almost out of weapons and he knew they’d be struggling soon.
“Yes,” Tricia informed him in her most dignified voice, pushing past him and taking a step on her bad foot. She immediately crumpled and he caught her before she hit the ground. “No,” she amended, cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
“Come on then, I’ll help you.” Asher motioned for her to climb up on his back, but for some reason Tricia looked unaccountably nervous at the prospect. “Today, please…” he pressed a little less patiently, and Tricia shook herself mentally and did as she was told.
Asher silently cast a weightlessness spell to make her easier to carry, hoping she didn’t notice or comment on it—but really, he had no desire to carry a hundred-and-something pound girl on his back through an arena full of glass unless he had to. He started jogging towards his teammates, trying to catch up because they were completely out of weapons now, and Maralynn and Michael were all scratched up and still trying to dodge glass. The former was doing a better job than the latter; obviously she had picked up on the pattern of deployment, though she was being slowed down considerably by her attempts to help Michael along.
Asher hadn’t intended to use either of his prisms in this obnoxious wasteland, because he and Tricia were the only ones with weapons remaining, and it was pointless to blast away something that would only just reform moments later. He would conserve his prisms until they cleared the plains, in case there was another segment to this arena and he needed to be able to defend them all.
All of that careful planning fled his brain immediately when he saw the spike pierce Maralynn’s thigh. Suddenly he was pulling his clear prism in front of his left eye, compounding with his violet one. He didn’t even know what spell he was looking for, just that he needed to do something to get those accursed glass spikes away from Maralynn before she was injured any worse.
His eye caught on a familiar alignment as he twisted his prisms rapidly, and he turned towards the owl that was now perched on a nearby rock with a distinctly smug look on its face, laughing at his obvious panic. Summ
oning all of his anger and emotion, he glared at the owl and screamed, “SHATTER!”
The last thing he saw was the owl’s eyes go comically wide—a distinctly human expression—and the flicker of Master Sark’s face in its features. Then the arena exploded.
Asher blinked a few times, only to find that he was standing in the middle of the translocation circle that overlooked the cliffs above the Gawain Sea. He turned in a circle to try and orient himself, abruptly aware of the fact that he was still carrying Tricia on his back, and that since he consumed his prisms entirely with the force of his shattering spell, he was now bearing her full weight.
“Lords and ladies, you’re heavy,” he greeted her, dropping her so that she was forced to land on her feet to prevent herself from falling onto her butt. Since they were no longer in the arena and her leg was healed, this wasn’t a problem.
“I was going to thank you for helping me out in there,” Tricia snarled at him, brushing her blond hair out of her face, “except that you just called me fat.”
“I did not call you fat,” Asher pointed out mildly. “I was actually wondering if your bones were made out of plutonium, because you’re much heavier than your figure would suggest.”
Tricia rolled her eyes and stormed off on her own, making her way down the path in the grass that led back to the castle.
One of the mastery-level students who had translocated them to their arena called out after her, “The Masters want to see all of you in classroom three.”
“How in the world did we get out of there without completing the challenge?” Maralynn asked from beside him, pulling her escaped hair back into a ponytail and helping Michael to his feet. “One minute I was getting skewered and the next thing I know, we’re back at Mizzenwald.”
Asher attempted to neaten his own messy hair, though he suspected it would do little good; his dark hair was always shaggy and sticking out at odd angles around his circlet, no matter what he did with it.
